


A Pound of Flesh

by woodswit



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Also ramsay is an orthopedic surgeon, Awkward Jon/Ramsay undertones, Dark!Jon with mental health issues, F/M, Jon is a detective, Modern AU, Previous Sansa/Ramsay, Sansa is a private investigator, Sexual tension and arguments and suspicion, Shireen is precious and loves Jon, alayne stone - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2020-10-19 17:40:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20661134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodswit/pseuds/woodswit
Summary: Modern AU.Alayne Stone, private investigator, knows better than to take on Tyrion Lannister's request. It's a risk - one that brings her back into the world of Sansa Stark - but when she recognizes the clues, she can't let the case go.Meanwhile, Jon Snow has returned to work at the Met, with strict orders to follow protocol this time. The only wrench in the plan is the private investigator he keeps running into - the one that looks a little too much like Sansa Stark.-"Supposedly Lannister is hiring a private investigator. A woman named Stone. Word is that she's good—and expensive. Watch out for her."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some housekeeping: Jon is a bit dark in this and struggles with mental health issues. If this is not your thing, kindly hit the back button.

_Holy water cannot help you now_

_See I’ve had to burn your kingdom down_

_And no rivers and no lakes can put the fire out_

_I’m gonna raise the stakes, I’m gonna smoke you out_

** _Ramsay_ **

A thick layer of frost covered the rolling moors from which the squat stone tower rose. Beyond the tower, the grey sea thrashed upon craggy cliffs, its seafoam white as frost. Gulls called to each other as they swept over the sea.

It had been the first cold night after a week of relentless rain. As Ramsay hastened to the tower, his boots cracked the frost and sank into squelching mud. He wondered if his guest had survived the night. After all, there was no heat in the tower, and he had removed his guest’s clothing the night before.

His black hounds were on his heels, their relentless panting steaming in the air. They did not dare walk one step ahead of him, nor did they lag behind—he had trained them well. His mouth watered just as slaver dripped from their beautiful, beastly jaws; together his strides and theirs lengthened and quickened with desire and anticipation as they got closer and closer to the tower. _Animal instinct_, he mused with reeling joy. _We’ve all got it. _

If his guest had survived the night, he might be generous and share with his hounds; if not, he would simply give his guest to them. There was little joy to be had in a dead body.

A lone figure waited outside the tower, huddled in a heavy parka. His drawn, broken face was wind-chapped as the cliffs themselves. He’d been outside all night. 

"Reek," he greeted above the wind. His man Reek began fishing the keys to the tower from his coat pocket.

The tower was as old as the land; it had been a ruin when his father, the late Roose Bolton, had taken over the estate, and then Roose Bolton had rebuilt it, originally intending it as safekeeping for the spoils of his money-laundering efforts.

Now that it belonged to him, Ramsay had found other uses for it.

He had loved the tower’s austere wooden door. The key Reek drew from his coat pocket was made of iron; it was medieval in its weight and craftsmanship. Reek’s pale hand trembled as he fitted the key into the lock, his watery grey eyes flicking back to the hounds; Reek had never quite got used to them. "Did our guest survive the cold night?"

“D-dunno,” Reek stammered, heaving the door a little as he unlocked it. Though the hardware was not even forty years old, it had been exposed to the harsh elements and salt of the sea for so long that it was already rusted, and already felt as ancient as the original tower. Ramsay liked it even better for its aesthetic appeal. It made him think of the Tower of London, one of his most favorite places. “Stopped crying round four, I th-think," he shivered.

"A pity," Ramsay sighed, and his breath was so warm it created a cloud of steam before his face. The desire was mounting; his blood was throbbing in his veins. Reek took so_ fucking_ long to open the fucking door, and Ramsay fisted his numb hands in his pockets to stop from strangling the fool as he rocked on his feet, biting his lip. _Open it open it open it JUST OPEN IT_.

The door swung open, the shaft of thin grey light falling across the packed-earth floor and revealing Ramsay's prize. Reek could not tell if the low, rumbling growl of desire and hunger came from Ramsay, or his hounds, or both, before they lunged.

** _Jon_ **

"Welcome back, Snow." Bowen Marsh rammed the key into the lock and pushed open the door to Jon's office. A rush of stale air greeted them: his office had no windows, and had been locked for three months.

Jon tried to still his features as the door opened, but his leg shook anyway with something like anticipation. The last time he had been here, he had been out of his mind.

They had done their best to clean up the evidence of his breakdown: a new chair replaced the one he had thrown and smashed into the wall, and the walls had evidently been patched up. The empty coffee cups, the stacks of files, the random odds and ends that inevitably junked up an office over time had all been removed, leaving the room both wildly personal and yet far too sterile.

"Thanks, Marsh," he said quietly, nodding to the older detective. Marsh nodded back, avoiding Jon's eyes; the last time Jon had spoken with him had been the same day he had smashed everything in this office, and their last words had not been friendly. But Marsh was professional and pragmatic, luckily, and therefore hid any remaining animosity he might have felt. As grateful as Jon was for this, it also pained him: once upon a time, Jon had counted Marsh among his closest friends.

Marsh gestured for Jon to enter, and then left Jon to himself. Jon stood in the doorway. The rest of the department behind him buzzed with low activity. So many people were pretending that nothing was out of the ordinary, though nothing could have been stranger than this day. Their stares burned Jon's back like a light shining too brightly. He swallowed over the lump forming in his throat, and stepped into his office.

Someone had tactfully removed the notes and photographs from his last case that had been tacked to his corkboard. That case had consumed his life for five years, and had ultimately led to this moment. Jon stared at the blank spaces, the un-faded squares of cork where the photographs and notes had been tacked for so long. Much like those dark squares, removing all evidence of that case just proved that there had been nothing else in his life. His life was as barren and faded as the corkboard; the space was defined more by what_ wasn't_ there than by what was.

The only personal thing that remained, the only object of importance to Jon and the only sign that his life had not been completely desolate, lay on its side atop his desk. It was a handmade, felted-wool wolf, and Jon touched it, smiling, before turning to look at the corkboard again.

"You could have gotten your hair cut." Mormont's gruff voice followed the soft click of the door closing, and Jon turned away from the blank corkboard to look at his boss, his mentor, the closest thing he had to a role model since his uncle Ned had died. Jon self-consciously touched his hair, which had been pulled into a low knot at the nape of his neck. He hadn't been able to bring himself to cut it. Not yet. He just needed a little more time.

"You're lucky I shaved," he tried to joke, but he couldn't make the tone light enough, and it came out too morose.

Mormont's gaze lingered openly on the scar over Jon's eyebrow. Jon felt the first stirrings of panic. If Mormont tried to bring it up--

“D’you know—I wish you hadn't. You look too pretty without a beard," he complained. "Well, beard or no, at any rate, you'll be pleased to know I got your papers. Dr. R'hllor faxed them last week."

His stomach turned. He didn't want to think about the psychiatrist, Dr. Melisandre R'hllor, who had been probing into him for the last three months any more than he did the reason he had been gone so long.

"Good," he forced out. "That's …good. So, what'll I do first?"

Mormont chuckled.

"You could clean your bloody office, but I know you won't, so I'll not hold my breath."

Mormont looked uncomfortable for a moment, like he was suffering an inward battle, but finally the older man seemed to come to some conclusion, and stepped closer. "I've got a case, but I won’t lie: I don't want to put you on it, lad,” he said bluntly, and he slapped a thin folder onto the desk. "It's a missing prostitute."

Jon felt the blood rush from his head; he needed to sit down, but he instead pretended to lean casually against his desk to look closer at the folder. He opened it, his grey eyes skimming the text, hyperaware of Mormont watching him carefully. It would be harder to fool the Old Bear than the others, he knew.

_Why am I trying to fool him?_ Jon wondered, turning the page over and finding nothing on the back. _I'm fine. Even Dr. R'hllor thought so. I don't need to fool anyone._ "I don't want you getting too close this time, Snow. The minute you start going—well, you know," Mormont began, struggling and flailing for polite words, "The first sign of _trouble_, I'm taking you off it and sending you straight back to Dr. R'hllor. Do you hear me? I'll have no more—no more breaking chairs and—and..." Mormont trailed off helplessly, desperately.

Jon couldn't look up. He stared at the page, unseeing, his vision blurring with shame. His mouth was horribly dry, but he reminded himself that it was nothing more than a side-effect of the medication that Dr. R’hllor had put him on. He tried to smile, but his lips got stuck against his teeth, and he licked his lips before looking up at Mormont.

"It's just a prostitute," he said calmly. "You don't have to worry. I'm fine."

"She's more than likely—"

"—Dead, yeah. It says she's been gone thirty-six hours," Jon finished, closing the folder. "It'll be a straightforward case."

Mormont snorted.

"Quiet, or the gods'll hear you," he joked. "Don't tempt fate now. Supposedly Lannister is hiring a private investigator. A woman named Stone. Word is that she's good—and expensive. Watch out for her."

For a long moment the two men regarded each other. "Welcome back, Jon Snow," Mormont said quietly, solemnly, at long last. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a dark, gleaming pistol. Jon's heart shuddered at the sight of it. Mormont set it gingerly, lovingly, on the desk. "If this case works out—if you can prove to me you're back, _really _back—then you can have her back."

"Her?" Jon tried to jest, his heart in his throat as he looked down at the gun. "Longclaw is hardly a woman's name."

"It's hardly a gun's name, either, but did anyone ask me?" Mormont scoffed, before picking the gun back up off the desk. Jon felt a distinct loss. He had felt naked without his gun; _useless_ without his gun.

“Maege never did,” Jon replied, forcing a smile. He tried not to watch too hungrily as Mormont stowed the gun back inside his jacket. Mormont tapped lightly on the folder now. "Find that girl, and I'll give you your girl back."

Mormont left the door open, leaving Jon exposed to the odd atmosphere beyond his office door, as the entire department valiantly attempted to pretend they were not in agony with curiosity about him.

He shrugged off his jacket and dropped into his chair—it was not nearly as comfortable as his old one. This time he didn't skim the information: almost as though on autopilot, his hands went to the drawer on the left side of his desk, and as he read, he procured one of his composition-style notebooks that he always used for all of his cases.

He opened to the first blank page, and got out one of his pens.

Atop the page, he wrote: Shae Lorath.

** _Tyrion_ **

It was pouring rain and Tyrion was soaked, his best suit arguably ruined. He used his broken umbrella to reach the doorbell next to the grubby little door, which, among the rest of the chaos of Charing Cross, had been nearly invisible. The rain pounded down harder, and Tyrion cursed everything from god to his fate to the weather to stupid teenaged boys who liked to humiliate grown men. He also decided to curse Miss Alayne Stone, private investigator, for good measure, because it took her an awfully long time to open her damn door.

At long last the door opened, and a tall, ugly woman with lank blonde hair and an ill-fitting suit stared him down.

"I’m Tyrion Lannister, here to see Miss Alayne Stone," Tyrion explained loudly over the roar of a passing bus.

"You're late," she said coolly, not stepping aside to allow him in. Tyrion considered hitting her with his umbrella. It would be utterly satisfying, but he needed Miss Stone…Then again, he'd heard she was beautiful, so this giantess could hardly be her, unless Varys had just been fucking with him—which was the likeliest, now that he thought of it.

"As are you, in opening your damn door. Let me in, woman. I'm a paying customer," Tyrion insisted furiously, and let out a sigh of relief as the woman stepped aside to allow him in. The narrow hall was cramped and dark, but at least it was dry.

"Follow me," the blonde ordered, before turning sharply on her heel and walking up the stairs. She was so tall and broad that she looked like she was climbing up a dollhouse staircase. Tyrion amused himself with the difference between them as he hastened to follow her, grateful that she would not watch him hobble up the steps.

They came to a door of mahogany with frosted glass; Tyrion already felt a bit better at the sight of such an elegant door.

"That's a rather posh door for such a hideous hallway," Tyrion remarked gamely, wondering if he could get a grin from this broad. "It's a bit like me wearing such fine suits, isn't it? Though I suppose, thanks to being stuck in the rain, you can hardly tell how fine this—"

"—Miss Stone will see you shortly. Have a seat. Would you like a biscuit?" the blonde asked stiffly without looking at him, opening the mahogany door and gesturing sharply to a seat. The waiting area was a tiny sitting room, though it was sumptuously decorated in shades of grey. Tyrion vaulted himself onto one of the brocade-covered chairs.

"Yes, please," he said, and tried not to smirk as he watched her stamp off to a cupboard behind her impressive desk, which boasted a luxurious Apple monitor, and an immaculate and eerie orchid. The windows looked out over Charing Cross, but the noise of the road was well blocked. The office felt cosy and sequestered. The blonde thrust a tray of biscuits at him, and then disappeared through another door of frosted glass. Tyrion strained to interpret the muffled voices, but it was no use, so he chomped on the chocolate biscuit and tried not to dwell too much on why he was here.

Sadly, he was a little short on non-depressing thoughts these days.

He tried not to think about the journey here, either: the humiliation of taking the Underground, rather than having his driver; then, those bloody teenagers who had clearly decided that being half the height of every other forty year old man was simply not terrible enough—why not also take his umbrella, break it, then beat him with it? So funny! Hilarious! Really, the wit of it was not to be believed... A lump of self-loathing in his throat, forming all day, was getting all the harder to swallow around.

Nothing was good about his life right now, and nothing had _ever_ been—save for Shae.

Miss Stone was getting the last of his money left to him. But if she could find Shae...

The blonde came through the door and gestured for him to enter. "Miss Stone will see you now," she said stiffly, clearly unhappy about this turn of events.

Tyrion shoved himself off the chair and, sopping wet and skint as fuck, he went in to see this Miss Stone.

...If Miss Stone could find Shae, it would be worth every pound.

** _Sansa_ **

Tyrion Lannister's name had jumped out to her from her agenda for the past twenty-four hours, making her heart leap into her throat each time she saw it.

Now at last the suspense would be over.

Her newly-cut fringe itched nearly as much as the black bob wig already did on its own, but she was certain that the fringe made her even less recognizable as Sansa Stark—not that Sansa Stark had known Tyrion Lannister very well. She'd only interacted with him a few times, before her "death." She doubted he would remember her even if she’d run into him without the wig.

...But she still had to be careful. Even taking him on as a client, even meeting him, was an enormous risk—some might even say an idiotic one.

Maybe there was a part of her that just wanted trouble.

She arranged her features into a mask of ivory as Tyrion Lannister waddled into her office, and Brienne—who had made it abundantly clear just how unwise she found this meeting—held her chin high and shut the door behind him.

Tyrion Lannister had the signature golden Lannister hair, partly, though he had an unexpected shock of white pluming from it as well. His eyes were mismatched, and a jagged scar hacked his already ugly face in half. He was shockingly, brutally ugly to look at. And yet...there was a charm to him, the Lannister charm. Perhaps it was the brutal confidence—and simultaneous self-loathing—with which he carried himself. He was drenched, wearing an immaculately tailored suit, and carrying a broken umbrella. When their eyes met over her fine desk, she saw no recognition in his mismatched gaze, and she felt her muscles begin to release.

Slightly. Not fully. She never fully relaxed. She had not relaxed in fifteen years.

"Miss Stone," he greeted politely. "Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice."

"Mr. Lannister," she greeted with a nod. "Please, have a seat."

"I believe you were emailed a file containing all of the necessary information," Tyrion said as he struggled onto the chair. Sansa averted her eyes instinctively and pretended to shuffle through the papers. She thought of her little brother Bran, who was severely handicapped, but pushed the thought aside. Alayne Stone had no little brother. She had no family at all.

"Yes, I have it all here. Thank you for this extensive information," she finally said, setting the papers down once Tyrion was situated upon the chair. There was a split second of naked gratitude upon his face that vanished instantly.

"The Met has done nothing. Evidently they've assigned the case to a detective who just came back from personal leave," he said, waving his hand. "I happen to have known said detective in a past life, and I only knew him as a self-absorbed adolescent. Suffice it to say, I do not feel supremely confident in the Met's ability to find Shae alive."

Sansa took out her notebook, a fine leather-bound book of heavy, quality stock, and began writing, as was her custom.

"These are helpful details for me to have. What’s this detective's name?"

"He's a copper,” Tyrion said rather wearily. "Former copper, I suppose. Detective Inspector Jon Snow."

Sansa's hand did not still, though her heart lurched back into her throat. She cleared her throat as Tyrion continued. A flash of dark grey eyes, a mouth nearly too pretty for a boy, and strong hands… _Jon Snow… _Breathing was, quite suddenly, difficult. A flush crept up her neck, but she was wearing a scarf so Lannister would not see it. “Evidently he had some sort of mental breakdown. A dear, well-connected friend of mine was able to glean some insider information on what happened with him, but it hardly matters. The point is that every minute that passes is another minute in which Shae could be lost forever."

“Of course. And have you spoken with this detective inspector yourself?”

“Not yet, but it’s only a matter of time before he brings me in for questioning. Some rookies questioned me last night, and I must say that my pet bird could have done a more effective job.”

Sansa finished writing and looked back at the printout of the email he had sent. It had been an exhaustive detailing of the sequence of events, and extensive information on Shae Lorath herself. It also contained very well developed guesses as to where she might be, and who might have taken her. Two names had jumped out at her in particular: Cersei Baratheon, Tyrion’s supermodel sister, and Tywin Lannister, his father, that famed surgeon.

“Tell me about the night Shae went missing,” Sansa said, setting the paper down. Tyrion arched his brows at her.

“You have it all there,” he protested. “We don’t have time to—“

“—We can do this my way, or Brienne will cut you a cheque for the amount you are owed and we can hail you a cab, Mr. Lannister,” she said coolly. Tyrion’s lips twisted into a grin.

“Oh, I do enjoy a woman in charge. Very well, then. I suppose this is some sort of tactic of yours.” He adjusted his suit jacket and cleared his throat. “Two nights ago, I came home from a _very _long, trying day at the office to find Shae missing. She had been living with me for about six months, and had stopped working for her pimp, Craster, in that time. She didn’t have a day job, and didn’t go out much, so right away I knew something was wrong.”

“Why didn’t she go out much?”

Tyrion sighed.

“I forbade it. My sister and I…well, we’ve never really got on, and for reasons I won’t go into, she has always had it out for me, and has always looked for ways to hurt me.”

“Reasons to kidnap or murder someone?”

“Nothing _new_, if that’s what you’re asking. I just mean we’ve always had bad blood between us, since we were little,” Tyrion dismissed with a wave of his hand. “So I had been working extremely hard to keep Shae a secret from the people who knew me, lest it get back to my _sweet _sister that I had someone I loved and cared about.

“Anyway, I got home and quickly realized that all was not right. I looked around the flat, and came upon a note on the bed.” Tyrion’s voice hardened; his fists clenched. Sansa pretended not to notice. "I would give you the note, but the brilliant Met police took it with them. Luckily, I have a picture of it. I anticipated a struggle of intellects, and snapped a picture before they could take it away.” Tyrion fished his mobile out of his pocket, and scowled at something on its screen before dismissing it and bringing up the picture. He leaned forward and Sansa took the mobile to study the picture.

The handwriting was shaky; it was written on pink paper.

_ to Tyrion my lion, _

_ I cant go on like this I am lonely _

_ You know I love you but love isn’t enough is it _

_ Im very sorry for everything I will miss you_

_ Xoxox Shae _

“It smacks of coercion, does it not?” Tyrion demanded. “Look at the inkblots; she was obviously crying. Her handwriting looks nothing like that; look, I can show you other examples.” With a shaking hand he frantically pulled crumpled up notes from his pockets and tossed them onto the desk. Sansa took them and smoothed them out. Little love notes, written in a large, bubbly, childish hand…

“How old was—is—Shae?”

“Nineteen.”

Sansa as a rule hid any judgment from her clients, but it was hard to still her features at this as she looked up at Tyrion. He was in his mid- to late-forties. Disgust roiled in her gut. She pressed her lips together.

“It would be hard for a nineteen-year-old woman who was used to being on her own to suddenly stay in a flat all day every day,” Sansa remarked cautiously, pushing the notes back to him. Tyrion snatched them back up.

“Yes, she was unhappy about it. I was working to find a new place for us to live, further from my sister, but—well, it was taking a bit of time,” Tyrion confessed, looking furious yet also shamefaced.

“A bit of money, you mean?” Sansa asked shrewdly, making another note. Tyrion smoothed out the fabric of his trousers.

“My debts are…not insignificant,” Tyrion said carefully. “A lifetime of whoring and gambling will do that rather quickly. My father had told me that day, as a matter of fact, that he would be cutting off my access to my trust fund unless I cleaned up my act.”

“Why not move into a cheaper flat? This address puts you in Mayfair—that’s not exactly an affordable neighborhood.”

Tyrion looked pained. He let out a sigh.

“I couldn’t let Shae know how bad things were. She was a whore, you know…so without my money, without the seduction of my wealth…”

“…You thought she would leave if she learned how bad things were, financially,” Sansa interpreted. “Was there any sign of a struggle? Or any signs that she had left of her own free will?”

“No clothing was missing. No jewelry. She didn’t bring her mobile, which the girl was bloody surgically attached to. But no signs of a struggle, either. Just the note.”

For another hour, they went through the particulars of Shae’s disappearance. At long last, Tyrion was shown out, and Sansa could sit with her thoughts in peace. There was a soft knock at the door, and Brienne appeared, bearing two steaming mugs of tea. Brienne looked like she had aged about ten years in the last two hours as she sat down heavily where Tyrion had sat.

“There’s no sign of this in the news, yet. I checked all major social media, too, and can find nothing. The girl had a Twitter and an Instagram account; both were blank,” Brienne reported before taking a long sip of her tea. Sansa stared into her mug.

“I’m sorry for putting you through that.”

Brienne abruptly set her tea down.

“It’s not me I’m concerned about,” Brienne insisted, almost angrily. “Miss Stone, you know this case is foolish to take on—”

“—I know, Brienne,” Sansa smiled sadly at the woman. “He’s not the only person who might know me, though,” she said now, looking down at one circled name in her notes in particular.

“Of course he isn’t! Tyrion himself might have known you, not to mention any of the Baratheons or Lannisters. I do wonder what Jaime will make of this—“

“—Jon Snow is the detective inspector from the Met on the case,” Sansa interrupted.

Brienne froze and stared at Sansa in horror.

“Jon Snow?” she croaked. “San—I mean Alayne, you cannot do this. The others might not know you, not with your wig and contacts, but Jon…was like a brother to you. He was raised alongside you for your entire childhood. Not to mention he’s not exactly a fool.”

“He was no brother to me,” Sansa replied, staring out the window onto Charing Cross. “We hardly spoke,” she recalled, thinking of the sour-mannered but sweet-tempered boy whom had lived with her family for most of her life, raised as her brother though he was in reality her cousin, the son of her father’s wild younger sister, Lyanna. He had been Robb’s closest friend, had loved Arya, Bran, and Rickon like they were his own younger siblings…but between her and Jon there had been an inexplicable chasm. They had had nothing in common, and any time spent together had been strained, uncomfortable.

“That doesn’t mean he won’t recognize you.”

“I won’t have to see him. I’m sure I won’t,” she said firmly. “Now, first things first: get me a meeting with Tywin Lannister.”

** _Jon_ **

"Heading out?" Mormont looked up from his work as Jon passed by his office.

"I'm getting dinner with my cousins. The Starks," Jon added needlessly—as if Mormont didn't know about Jon's upbringing, as if in three months the man could have forgotten everything he knew about Jon from ten years of working together. Mormont looked a bit thrown off, but he forced a smile regardless.

"Good. Good," he said after a beat too long. "That's good."

"Yeah." Jon shifted. "Well, see you tomorrow."

"Indeed."

Marsh was packing up as Jon passed by his desk. Jon had to unstick his lips again to speak. His head was throbbing, too. Dr. R'hllor had upped his dosage a few days ago, and he supposed the dry mouth and headaches were the result. Even his eyes ached, and his heart fluttered uncomfortably.

"Night, Marsh," he forced out as he passed. The red-faced man barely looked up.

"Night, Snow," he muttered reluctantly. Jon wanted to linger, longed to say more, but his throat was stuck again, and he found himself bursting forth into the November evening, breathless with a grief and shame that he could not name.

They were meeting at a French restaurant, which Jon should have realized was a hint that Petyr Baelish, who worked to manage the Stark's wealth and inheritances, would be joining them.

The restaurant was stuffy, and too fancy. Jon gave his name to the hostess as he spotted Arya with her boyfriend, Gendry, and Bran, who was evidently having some sort of disagreement with Arya and his girlfriend, Meera. A large path had been cleared for his enormous, complicated wheelchair. Petyr Baelish sat, observing, clad in his usual three-piece bespoke suit, with a general air of amusement about him. Bran's normally pale, gaunt face was flushed, Meera's hand on his arm, and Arya looked furious. Oddly, she kept shooting glowers at Meera, who seemed to be keenly avoiding her eye. Rickon was, per usual, late.

"Jon!" Gendry called a little too desperately, waving like a drowning man as Jon approached them. Arya glanced and waved shortly, before returning to glaring at Meera.

"Snow," Petyr greeted, gesturing to the chair beside his. He poured a glass for Jon from a bottle of wine that was, undoubtedly, over one hundred pounds. Petyr's clever, swarthy eyes were dancing. He always seemed like he was inwardly making fun of Jon. Those eyes lingered on Jon's scar. "It's been too long. Have some Montrachet."

"Thanks." Dr. R'hllor had told him to not drink while on this medication, but he couldn't exactly refuse. Petyr was paying, after all. "Where's Rickon?"

"Who knows. Probably clubbing," Arya snorted in disgust. Gendry looked like he would have liked to simply melt into the floor.

"I'll text him," Jon said carefully, glancing between his cousins. The tension was thick. Much as Jon disliked Petyr, he glanced curiously, probingly, at him now. What was going on with Arya and Meera? Petyr arched his brows, and subtly nodded to a pile of photographs on the table, between Arya and Bran.

They seemed to be of a woman with chin-length black hair, taken from a distance. Jon studied Meera, who was a photog. She must have taken the pictures... There was something familiar about the girl, though he couldn't see the pictures well enough to say for certain. Arya, though temperamental, was not one for holding onto a disagreement longer than necessary, so this had to be bad. 

He took his mobile out and fired off a text to Rickon, though it was unnecessary: moments later, Rickon sauntered in, completely underdressed for the restaurant. Suddenly, Jon felt unbearably weary, and he took a long swig of wine.

"I heard today was your first day back," Petyr said in a low voice, presumably to cut the tension that was ever tautening as Rickon approached their table. Even Arya, covered in piercings and tattoos, had worn one of her nicer shirts, and Jon could see her fury rising as she took in Rickon's track bottoms and scruffy cap. He took another swig of wine.

"That's right, Jon, back at Scotland Yard?" Meera cut in rather loudly. Jon sensed she was about to angle for something. He took another swig of wine. He was being foolish, being destructive, as Dr. R'hllor had discussed. He took another swig of wine. His head was only throbbing more. He could feel Arya's eyes on him.

"Yeah," he said. His mouth already felt thick. He cleared his throat as he realized he was already on a path to being solidly drunk, as Rickon slid into the seat next to him. "Rickon—long time no see."

"What happened to your forehead?" Rickon asked bluntly. Jon could _feel_ Arya seething.

"I got hit at work," Jon said. "What happened to yours?" He eyed the tattoo peeking out from underneath Rickon's wild auburn curls. Rickon pulled his hair back, showing a tattoo of a wolf. The skin around it was pink; it was a fresh tattoo.

"You realize that will be impossible to cover that up, right?" Arya asked with awful sarcasm. "If you ever want a job—like, anywhere—then you are going to be fucked."

Bran was staring at the photographs, Meera was staring at Jon, Gendry was staring at the ceiling, and Petyr was looking between all of them with an air of good humor. "Also, if you had _bothered_ to return anyone's calls or texts in the last three months, you would know that Jon had--" 

"—A bad patch at work," Jon cut in swiftly. He gulped down some water, though Petyr poured him more wine. "So what are these pictures?"

"We think you could help," Meera said quickly, shoving the pictures across the table towards him. Jon felt Petyr glance at him again, but he avoided the man's gaze, and took the photographs.

"Sansa is alive," Bran explained.

"I saw her near Charing Cross, and I took some pictures. I've been back there a few times, looking for her, but I haven't seen her since," Meera explained hastily, as Jon studied the photographs. He saw Arya covering her face out of the corner of his eye, and Rickon was staring down at the table as though in a trance.

A heaviness settled over Jon, heavier than any depression. He felt old. He felt tired.

The car accident that had killed Catelyn, Ned, Robb, and Sansa, and had paralyzed Bran from the waist down, had caused the Stark family so much destruction. Jon had been out of the Stark home by then, and had received an abrupt call to find out that his uncle, who had raised him, along with his cousins, one of whom had been like a brother to him, had died suddenly...and also that he had been in Ned Stark's will.

Given the circumstances under which he had left the Stark home, this had been especially painful, and the Stark money that Petyr Baelish had doled out to him over the past fifteen years had been a source of discomfort, shame, and guilt for Jon. He had never been able to bring himself to touch the money—until three months ago, when the rug had been pulled out from under him, and that money had quite literally saved his life.

Perhaps the greatest destruction of all was in its effect on Bran. Bran had been the sole survivor of the accident that night, and had never recovered. He had to live in an assisted-living facility, and had spent the past fifteen years consumed by his conviction that Sansa had survived. This was made worse by the fact that her body had never been found. Her casket had been empty. Bran swore he had seen her crawling away from the wreckage, and in the last year, he insisted he had uncovered a new memory from that night: of Jaime Lannister, who had come upon the wreckage and purportedly saved Bran, pushing Bran off the bridge and causing his paralysis before helping Sansa escape.

Bran's anguish had been a great source of pain for both Arya and Jon over the years. Arya, in particular, had devoted significant energy into helping Bran find closure—and yet he never moved on.

And now Jon understood why Arya had been so furious with Meera. He felt hot and tingly, and now he took another swig of wine as he stared at the pictures.

It was a woman, perhaps in her mid-thirties—well, it was the right age, at any rate; Sansa would have been turning thirty-five this year—with black hair in a bob, dressed all in black, ordering lunch at a Pret a Manger. She was beautiful, and tall, as Sansa had been, but she looked nothing like her. Sansa had had thick, wavy red hair, cascading down her back, and light blue-green eyes. She had been, even at age nineteen, an infamous beauty. But this woman seemed to have dark eyes, and Jon supposed she could have looked like Sansa, with different hair and eyes...but who could possibly say? All of them looked drastically different than they had fifteen years ago.

Jon wearily set the photographs down as a waiter came by to take their orders. Rickon refused Petyr's wine, and instead ordered a beer.

The waiter smiled at him quizzically, and Arya covered her face in rage and exasperation. Bran hadn't even chosen anything to eat, and Meera ordered for him, and Jon found himself feeling lightheaded, just staring at her. _How dare you,_ he thought, but the rage felt separate from him, a thing he lacked the password to access but knew existed.

"So, we were thinking that Jon might be able to look into her at work," Meera suggested after the waiter left. Jon stared at her.

"I have no idea who this woman is," he said bluntly, touching the top photograph. "How could I possibly ‘look into’ her? And why would I? She looks nothing like Sansa."

He stared Meera down, and Meera returned his stare unabashedly. It occurred to Jon, suddenly, that Meera despised him, and probably had always despised him. It was naked on her face now.

"I don't even remember what Sansa looked like. I don't remember her at all."

Rickon's sudden, anguished admission caused them all to go silent, to look down. Jon's grief grew heavier. It was too easy to forget that Rickon was only nineteen, that Bran was still in his mid-twenties. They were so young...even Arya was barely more than thirty. Though they had been through so much, they were so innocent in some ways...

"You remember Sansa, don't you, Uncle Petyr?" Bran's voice was clear, and strong. Petyr had been uncharacteristically quiet, and Jon reluctantly passed Petyr the photographs. Jon realized that Rickon was suddenly trying not to cry, and he hated Meera even more. As Petyr studied the photographs dispassionately, Jon stared at Meera and fantasized about killing her. With her stupid hair, her stupid camera around her neck...

"Sansa was beautiful, like your mother." A creeping feeling, like icy fingers, ran up Jon's spine. His tongue was too heavy. "She had waist-length dark red hair, and bright blue eyes...did you know that is one of the rarest combinations?" Something about Petyr's tone chilled him. He sounded like a curator discussing a rare artifact he had once touched. "I remember Sansa well, because she was the spitting image of your mother at that age." Petyr dropped the pictures onto the table. "This isn't Sansa, my dear Bran." His voice was not without sympathy, and yet...

Jon was relieved when the food arrived. He ate without tasting, trying to sop up some of the alcohol. He'd had barely two full glasses of wine and felt like he'd have a headache tomorrow. Perfect—just how he wanted to show up to his second day of work in three months: hung over and angry.

The rest of the dinner crawled by. After more strained conversation about Rickon's new tattoo and Jon's return to work, Petyr opened his briefcase and gave them the update they had all gathered to get: on their funds, on their parents' estate.

Jon absorbed none of it. He wasn't a Stark; he did not belong here. Oh, he was Lyanna's son, and so technically he was half a Stark, but he had no right to Ned's money...Petyr paid the bill (which Jon knew must be exorbitant), and Arya dragged Gendry out in a huff, and Rickon skulked off, and Petyr excused himself.

Jon helped Meera wheel Bran out of the restaurant. It was raining again, and Hodor, one of the caretakers at Bran's assisted living facility, had pulled up in his van. As Hodor and Osha loaded Bran into the van, Jon pulled Meera aside. The inebriation was clearing, and his headache was worse than ever, and the hollow anger was as throbbing and consuming as the headache. He pulled Meera behind a potted plant, and rounded on her.

"How dare you," he began calmly, flexing his fingers. Meera stared up at him defiantly, tears in her eyes.

"You know it's Sansa and you won't admit it. You're really quite good at running away from things, aren't you?"

If he had been younger, more inexperienced, less drowned in his own pain, her words might've hurt. As it was, he stared sadly at her.

"Bran is trying to heal," he began. He wondered if he had paracetamol in his flat. Even his teeth were beginning to ache, and he massaged the bridge of his nose. "He needs to accept that Sansa--"

"--Oh, shut up," Meera hissed, her face turning pink with a fury he had not expected. Her hands balled into fists. "I thought you'd care enough to help but if you won't, we'll just figure it out on our own."

"There's nothing to figure out, Meera. Baelish remembers her the best, and--"

"--Petyr is a fucking pedophile, let's face it," she seethed. The rain began to fall harder, and she began to tremble with cold. "You know what I think?" she asked in a low, scathing voice.

"Oh, tell me what you think," he blurted sarcastically, hated how his voice raised. "You only just fucked up a dinner for absolutely no reason; yes, Meera, tell me what you--"

"--I think you left because you were fucked up and you knew it, and you were fucked up about Sansa, just like Petyr was, just like every man was."

Jon stared at her. Her words were like a slap of ice, from nowhere. Meera was breathing hard. "I think you wanted to fuck her," she said in a rush, "I think you had no cousinly feelings for her at all, and you're ashamed of it. I saw that prostitute you were so obsessed with, Ygritte, was it? I saw her. She looked like Sansa, she looked like a poor man's Sansa Stark--"

His fist had clenched. He had seen red. For a moment he left his own body.

But it was Osha who saved him from saying something he would have truly regretted.

"You coming with us, little lady, or you going to stand here in the rain and quarrel with Jon Snow?" the dark-haired woman asked slyly, peering at them. Jon dropped his hand, suddenly short of breath. Meera's eyes were wide and wild as Osha led her away, her gaze fixed on Jon.

He stood in the rain, his head throbbing and pulsing, his fist still clenched and shaking.

Maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the day, maybe it was all the bloody French food—but he went to the nearest alley and doubled over and emptied the contents of his stomach. Gasping, one scarred hand braced against the wet brick, bile and vomit and rain dripped from his lips.

** _Sansa_ **

In the warm light of her bathroom, Sansa peeled the black wig off. A few short black hairs came with it; she'd only cut the blunt fringe this morning, in a desperate attempt to further disguise herself. Petyr stood in the doorway to the bathroom, holding a glass of wine, watching almost hungrily as she freed her thick auburn hair from its pins. She could see him in the reflection.

For years, she had simply dyed her hair black, but the effort had fried her hair, and seeing herself with black hair in the mirror each day had made her drift further and further into despair. The wig was uncomfortable; hot and itchy, and it never seemed to sit quite right, even though she'd paid exorbitantly for it...But it was worth it, to be able to see herself staring back at her in the mirror at the end of each day.

"Nice fringe," he remarked wryly. He was one of three people in the whole world who knew her name, who knew who she really was. He had known the Starks extremely well. In fact, he had been with her family tonight. He pushed himself away from the doorframe and came up behind her, touching her hair.

"I saw Tyrion Lannister today." She arranged the wig on the styrofoam head, and set about removing her colored contacts. Brown disappeared, and then her own blue-green eyes were blinking back at her, a bit red from removing the contacts. She thought she might never get used to them. "That's why I cut the fringe," she explained.

"A risky move," Petyr replied. She felt him tugging on an auburn curl and she resisted the urge to flinch. Petyr's touches were limited; he never did more than tug at her hair or touch her cheek. "Feeling dangerous, lately, Alayne?"

She couldn't tell him why she'd taken Tyrion Lannister on as a client; the words got stuck in her throat. She turned the warm water on and rinsed her makeup from her face, watching the pink and black swirl down the drain. She had to darken her brows, and wear considerable eye makeup, each day. She felt his fingertips through her curtain of hair, grazing against her back, against the silk of her robe. If it were her bare skin, he'd feel the heavy scarring. No one had ever seen it, save for Jaime Lannister and Brienne. Petyr knew of its existence, but he himself had never seen it, nor had he ever pressed her about it. It was a relief. She preferred to forget it was there.

"I need clients," she said pragmatically, after the makeup had been removed. She straightened and stared at herself, her skin reddened and wet, and slowly applied her various creams and skin treatments. Petyr was still fingering a lock of her hair thoughtfully.

"You're not the only one who saw an old face. I saw Jon Snow today."

She had heard about Jon's breakdown through Petyr—something to do with a case gone bad with the Met—but her information was limited. "He looked unwell. Drank too much wine." There was a tone of relish in Petyr's voice. He always had loved drama. "The word is that he's been in psychotherapy three times a week and is on intensive mood stabilizers. He was zonked out of his mind and could barely hold a conversation."

“Anti-depressants?” she asked curiously. Petyr’s lips twisted into a smirk.

“No, think stronger. Much stronger.”

She didn’t want to think of Jon Snow. Dread thrummed like a church bell in her head.

"How were the rest of them?" Sansa sat on the edge of the bathtub and began smoothing moisturizer on her legs. Petyr's dark eyes followed the movement hungrily, though he did not move closer to her.

"Let's see...Rickon's got a new tattoo, Bran's girlfriend continues to antagonize Arya..."

"Oh, god, another tattoo? Doesn't Arya have enough for the two of them?"

Petyr smirked and swilled his wine.

"It's a wolf tattoo, naturally—on his forehead."

"His forehead?! Idiot," Sansa grumbled, even as her heart reeled with pain. Rickon had been four years old when she had 'died.'

She often ‘visited’ him, as she did Arya and Bran, though they never saw her, of course. They wouldn't recognize her, anyway. She just liked to go and observe them.

Bran was part of a tabletop gaming club that met at a bookshop in Kensington on Saturdays, and she liked to stop at the florist across the street at the same time and catch a glimpse of Meera wheeling him inside. In spite of everything that had happened to him, he’d grown so handsome, like Robb only a bit narrower in the jaw, and paler, too, and it made her heart swell with painful pride.

Rickon was already a frequenter of many of the clubs in Soho, and she stalked his Instagram account for the clubs he haunted so she could follow him, just to catch a glimpse of him sitting in the VIP section, smoking his herbal cigarettes and getting into fights.

Arya was off in Hackney, living with her boyfriend Gendry, and working as a chef at a very cool restaurant. Sansa would take the Tube to Hackney and visit the cool used bookstores and watch them walk to the restaurant for her shift sometimes.

She'd never visited Jon, though.

"So, what did Lannister want? I do wonder how he heard about you." Petyr followed her into the kitchen. He'd brought a fine bottle of French wine, and he poured her some now, as Sansa prepared herself a small dinner. Cooking was one of her few passions that she could actually safely enjoy, and even on long days like today, she took the time to prepare an immaculate dinner for herself.

She snorted as she began cutting up vegetables.

"As if you don't already know. His girlfriend has gone missing."

What she didn't say was whom Tyrion Lannister primarily suspected: Ramsay Bolton.

Petyr slouched against the counter, watching her.

"I may have heard something of it," he conceded slyly. “Would you like some wine? It’s a Mersault.”

“That would be lovely, thank you.” She heard Petyr pour her a glass.


	2. Chapter 2

_I can see it coming from the edge of the room_

_Creeping in the streetlight holding my hand in the pale gloom_

_Can you see it coming now?_

** _Tyrion_ **

Tyrion returned alone to his flat—the crime scene, he had dubbed it—and stood in the darkened doorway, surveying the sprawling land which his father had forced upon him, whether he wanted it or not.

Oh, but Mayfair was a fine enough address. More than fine, really. The thing he had neglected to tell Private Investigator Stone was that he had been unable to move out of this boring flat because his father had informed him that keeping this flat—a respectable address—was part of the deal of keeping himself in the Will.

The Will. Oh, the Will. He was weary of it already and he did not even know its contents; Baelish had seen to that, of course. He could just see it now: the extended Lannister clan picking over his father’s wealth like crows on roadkill, squabbling over every last bit of flesh. If he was lucky, a few of them would kill each other off over the matter.

The one thing he liked about this flat—the _only_ thing that felt like _his_, that made this prison feel less like a hostile hotel room and more like a home—was the entertainment center. In the living room, an enormous flatscreen, wider than even his brother’s wingspan, was mounted among tasteful shelving, surrounded by impressive books and artfully arranged photographs, its smooth, velvety-black screen nearly disappearing among all the timeless decor. And beneath that flatscreen were two enormous drawers that housed Tyrion’s private, personal, pathetic obsession.

Tyrion opened himself a bottle of Bordeaux and snatched a glass, and dropped onto the cream leather sofa placed before the flatscreen. How many nights had he and Shae whiled away before this flatscreen, he absorbed in his wine and his obsession, and Shae boredly scrolling through Twitter and Instagram like the Gen Z-er that she was?

Now, this obsession was his only distraction from his agony. Tyrion called out to Alexa and the flatscreen bloomed with life, and Roger Moore in _Live and Let Die _was before him, and as he took a long gulp of the Bordeaux, he felt himself unclench at last as he sank into the leather, tilted his head back. "Bond, James Bond," he said aloud. He could recite most of the James Bond movies word-for-word, could do reasonable impressions of all of the characters—his Sean Connery was precise, subtle—and could _see_ the scenes in his mind as though his brain had been fitted with its own flatscreen, but he still liked to have them playing in the background.

He still had Shae’s mobile, as he had informed Alayne Stone, and he picked it up from the couch now where he’d dropped it last night after passing out, and unlocked it. He had looked through her text messages, her missed calls, her voicemails, and her search history, but nothing had proved remotely suspicious. He had looked through her Facebook, her Instagram, but of course he didn’t even know what he was looking for. He kept telling himself that he’d find something, some sign… As though he’d come upon a rambling text message from some villain, a soliloquy explaining himself and his motives.

Tyrion was not stupid. He knew how pointless this was.

Half-watching Roger Moore, half looking through Shae’s mobile, he absently opened the Google Maps app. Shae had rarely went anywhere other than the flat and to go shopping, but he opened the timeline anyway, out of curiosity.

The flat, Harrods, the flat, Pret a Manger, the flat, Harvey Nichols… But one address, from three weeks earlier, made Tyrion go cold. Blood pounded in his ears.

There was an address in Knightsbridge, one he knew all too well.

It was his father’s address.

** _Jon_ **

He had woken up with a cottony mouth and a throbbing head, his jaw aching like he'd been clenching it in his sleep. He was turning into Stannis. The older detective inspector was known for perpetually clenching his jaw—a subject that Edd, Sam, Pyp, and Grenn had never seemed to tire of laughing about.

"Does he wear a mouthguard at night, do you think, or is the grinding sound necessary for fending off his enemies?" Sam had once posited over beers, earning laughter from the others.

“It’s a wonder he’s got teeth left at all,” Edd had added gloomily.

“He does the sound effects for the torture chambers in the Tower of London, for the tourists,” Pyp had supplied, earning a laugh as he often did.

Jon respected Stannis too much to make fun of him, though, and these days, he was empathizing with the overly serious man more and more. Staring in the bathroom mirror, he massaged his sore jaw. The scissors he had bought specifically to cut his hair—he didn't think he could bring himself to pay someone else to do it—sat on the rim of his sink, untouched. His hair was still wet from the shower and hung in his face, the curls clinging wetly to his skin.

_I love your hair, loverboy, _she had said so many times, touching him softly. No one had ever touched him so gently before.

He couldn't do it yet. He just needed a little more time.

Jon shoved the scissors in the medicine cabinet, and in doing so caught a glimpse of the orange pill bottle, taunting him and reminding him. Grudgingly, he opened the bottle and shook one pill into his open palm. Even the thought of taking the pill made his stomach clench and his head throb, but Dr R'hllor had told him the side effects would go away eventually, and taking this pill obediently was one of the conditions of his return to work at New Scotland Yard. He tossed the pill back and gulped down water from the sink.

Speaking of Stannis, the man was the only one in the office yet when Jon arrived at New Scotland Yard. Jon passed by his office, the light still on, and wondered if the man had been there all night. They'd not spoken yet; he wasn't sure if Stannis even knew he was back. But to stop and talk would be awkward, and he was so tired…

"Is that you, Mormont?" Stannis called from his office as Jon crept by. Jon bit back an oath.

"No, it's Snow," he said, pausing as Stannis' door opened, revealing the man himself.

Stannis' hair seemed a bit thinner, a bit greyer, since Jon had seen him last, but perhaps it had always been that way and he simply hadn't noticed. It was rather clear that Stannis had slept in his office—or at least, spent the night there if not slept, as he was wont to do. His clothes were rumpled and his skin had a pallid, greasy look.

Jon wasn't the only one in the department whose life was dangerously imbalanced.

Stannis' dark, shadowed navy eyes took in the scar over Jon's eye.

"Snow. Didn't know you'd come back."

Jon also wasn't the only one who had a regular, standing appointment with Dr R'hllor in the department. Stannis had been seeing her for years, though Jon had always had his suspicions about that particular dynamic—even more so after having had some appointments with the seductive psychiatrist. There was something foul there, though Jon had nothing to ground his suspicions.

Stannis had always been awkward, unpersonable, and he lingered uncomfortably now, clearly unsure of how he ought to proceed. He tapped the doorframe with the palm of his hand, avoiding Jon's eyes. Jon had always got on with him well, because he respected him and because he had become very close with Stannis’ only daughter, Shireen, but he'd always sensed especial discomfort with him on Stannis' part, the origin of which he had never discovered. "Well," he began, clearing his throat, "welcome back. Shireen has been missing you, though of course, she's off to Oxford now. And I see you're already back in the swing of your old work ethic."

"Already got a new case," Jon agreed with a forced smile. "This one seems straightforward, though." He considered telling Stannis about how it was the only way for him to get his gun back, but decided against it. He felt weakened, shamed, and vulnerable about not having his gun, and nothing about Stannis invited such confession.

"Right. Good. Well, best let you get to it," Stannis said after a strained pause, and the lean man disappeared back into his office. Jon heard the door shut, then lock, and he tried not to smile as he went to unlock his own office.

He had to decide how he was going to track down Shae Lorath.

Preliminary casework suggested that Cersei and her father, Tywin, were among potential suspects responsible for Shae Lorath's disappearance, though they had not been brought in for questioning yet. Jon had known Tywin and Cersei, both the Lannister and Baratheon families which were highly prominent in London society.

It had been fifteen years since Jon had seen any of them. It had been at the funeral for the Starks—Ned, Catelyn, Robb, and Sansa—that he had seen them last. Robert, a former football player himself, had grown significantly heavier in his grief, his face ruddy with too much indulgence.

Jon shrugged off his coat, sat at his desk, and went through the case file again. The details were sparse: Two days ago, Tyrion Lannister had returned to his splendid flat in Mayfair to find that his girlfriend, who had previously worked as a prostitute for Craster, of all people, was missing. _Looks like I'll be meeting up with Gilly, _Jon thought grimly. Sam wouldn't like it. Back during _that_ case, Gilly had been one of his primary informants, and a wall had begun to rise up between he and Sam for it. 

Shae had left a suicide note that reeked of coercion; all of the experts had agreed that this was no suicide note, and foul play had been involved. Tyrion, under questioning, had insisted that it was either his sister or his father who had done it, but could not provide solid reasoning to base these guesses on.

Well, Tyrion clearly had reasons for supplying these two names, and Jon had known the man, who worked in wealth management, to be highly intelligent. Tywin Lannister and Cersei Baratheon were as good a place as any to start his investigation.

He’d start, he decided, by paying a visit to Tywin Lannister.

** _Sansa_ **

Maybe Petyr was onto something—perhaps she was trying to tempt fate. For today she would be making her most foolish move yet.

She was going to go visit Tywin Lannister.

She dressed with extreme care: Tywin Lannister, the head of surgery at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, was uncommonly shrewd, with a near-photographic memory and a long history of interaction with the Stark family. Nothing about her appearance could speak of Sansa Stark. She pinned up her auburn hair, flattening it to her head even more carefully than usual, before setting her newly-trimmed wig on top. The fringe was unflattering, sitting too blunt and heavy over her forehead, but that could only help her. That, combined with her brown contact lenses and heavily penciled brows, hid her natural features quite well. She dressed in sleek black and a tailored trench coat, and took the Underground to Hyde Park sans Brienne.

"Don't you think this is pushing it too far, Miss Stone?" Brienne had asked desperately, walking her to the Charing Cross station.

"Lannister is a client. We need clients," Sansa countered shortly, adjusting her cashmere scarf's knot at her throat. She knew it would be important to be both punctual and perfectly dressed for Tywin to take her at all seriously.

"There are _other_ clients," Brienne insisted as they paused atop the steps descending to the Tube. Sansa turned to face Brienne.

“I know. I just… they used to be so much a part of my world,” she admitted. “They were practically extended family.” 

A muscle in Brienne's jaw leapt.

"That is all the more reason to _not_ take it." Her nostrils flared. "At_ least_ take me with—“

"No. We talked about this. It's too much of a risk. No one will recognize me, but they'll all recognize you."

Leaving Brienne incandescent with rage, Sansa took the Underground to Hyde Park. She ascended the steps and came out of the Hyde Park Corner station, to a significantly less chaotic landscape. She'd always loved Hyde Park, with its neat, quiet tidiness and black sash windows. She had ten minutes to get to Tywin Lannister's walk-up; she walked quickly, the heels of her boots clacking on the sidewalk. Her heart was in her throat, and the closer she got to the Knightsbridge address, the sicker she felt.

Tywin had worked for years as a surgeon; when she had known him, she had barely ever seen him, so consumed by his career was he. These days, he did little surgery, and instead spent his time sitting on medical boards and teaching. Her memory was of a very tall man with shrewd green eyes and clipped speech, always impeccably dressed, and highly disdainful of everyone. He'd always made her nervous, but now she was no longer Sansa Stark. She was Alayne Stone, private investigator, and Alayne Stone wasn't afraid of anyone or anything—certainly, she was not going to have her feathers ruffled by a man like Tywin Lannister.

Lannister's walk-up was fronted by a tidy but economical garden, the roses standing shrill and on-end as though they’d been reprimanded a moment earlier. A man was lingering out front, and at first she thought Tywin’s assistant might have been waiting to meet her, but she checked her watch and saw that she was a bit early. It could not be the assistant. 

The washed sunlight made it hard to distinguish his features, and he was pacing so he turned away from her briefly, giving her time to covertly study him. He was perhaps her own height and extremely lean, with a natural athleticism to his body and thick dark hair pulled into a knot at the nape of his neck. He was wearing a dark wool jacket and studying his mobile, and he looked up abruptly as she approached him. A few meters apart, she finally saw his face, and their eyes met.

Her stomach dropped. She'd know that face anywhere.

It was Jon Snow.

He had grown into a beautiful man, albeit a rather worn-looking one. His face was drawn, like he had dropped quite a bit of weight in a very short amount of time, but the hollows beneath his cheekbones and the grief sharpening his jaw only made him more haunting, only drew the eye to him in even more longing. There was a pink, shiny new scar over his left brow, but his grey eyes were just as warm and gentle as his jaw was set and hard. A hard mouth and gentle eyes, she remembered, and she pretended to get a text on her mobile to have the excuse to look down and away from him, to give herself a chance to recover.

She had not seen him in well over fifteen years—in fact, it was probably closer to twenty. He had run from the Stark family home well before her disappearance, off to the army.

"Are you—" he began, as she approached and came to a stop outside of Tywin's walkup. "Sorry, I'm waiting for Mr Lannister's personal assistant—"

"Alayne Stone, private investigator," Sansa said crisply, at long last looking up from her mobile and offering a gloved hand to Jon. Alayne Stone did not know Jon Snow, and she would not be ruffled by _him,_ either. Nothing ruffled Alayne Stone. “I happen to have an appointment with Mr Lannister as well. You must be from the Met, yes?"

"I see you've done your research," Jon conceded, looking annoyed. His handshake was almost painfully firm. He was eyeing her closely, too closely. "Detective Inspector Jon Snow,” he added, with emphasis on his title. “You must be the PI that Tyrion Lannister hired."

“Well-reasoned,” she complimented, and watched his mouth twitch at the hint of condescension. He looked about to supply a retort, but the front door opened and a very tall, young blond man appeared there, looking flushed and a bit out of sorts at the sight of them.

"Oh, dear," he stammered. "You're _both_ here. I had hoped one of you might—well, it doesn't matter."

"Double-booked Mr. Lannister's morning, did we?" Sansa guessed drily.

"Y-yes, well, I've only just started, still getting used to—well, it hardly matters, both of you might as well come in," he resolved, and stepped aside, gesturing for them both to enter.

Sansa looked back at Jon Snow, who was studying her with a little too much interest. He arched his brows in amusement and gave a wry gesture.

"After you. _Please,_" he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. Sansa went ahead of him and heard him speaking behind her. "Unfortunately, I do assume that the Met will take precedence with Mr Lannister's actual time today."

"Well, we all know what happens when you assume, Detective Inspector," she said lightly, without turning back, as she stepped across the threshold.

** _Jon_ **

For a moment, the woman had seemed shockingly familiar to him. It was like trying to recall the words to a song you’d heard too much a decade ago. It had briefly thrown him off balance; he followed her into the foyer of Tywin Lannister's home.

_The photographs. _He felt queasy as though he were standing in the rain outside of that French restaurant all over again. He hadn't studied the photographs carefully enough, he told himself. It would be far too much of a coincidence. It was impossible; there was just no way. 

Stone lions guarded the front door to Tywin Lannister’s Knightsbridge walk-up, and checkered marble tile led to a magnificent staircase that bloomed with a mahogany bannister and was crowned by a glittering, splendid crystal-and-brass chandelier.

“Here, you both can sit in the drawing room, and I’ll just—“ The frazzled blond man disappeared, leaving Jon and Miss Stone in the entryway alone. They glanced between each other.

Her hair was most definitely not naturally black, not even brown. Judging by the tone of her skin, he would guess she was naturally redheaded—or was he biased?—and she was clearly wearing colored contacts. They _almost_ worked, so she had to have lighter eyes, to allow for the brown to take precedence. Light blue, he decided, studying them. She smiled at him, now, and it threw him off-guard. Her smile was radiant.

She was a _lovely_ woman. He felt like a fool for noticing it, as she was about to make his job—and he _had_ to do this right—much more difficult.

“Ready…set…” she began under her breath… He caught on at once.

“…Go,” he finished, and they parted ways and began nosing around separately, in a near-silent frenzy. He heard Miss Stone opening the drawers to the console table by the door, and he poked his head into the dining room, which was all red velvet and golden brocade and cut-crystal catching the dim December light, the dining table set in anticipation of a magnificent dinner.

Too soon, the blond man returned.

“I told you to wait in the drawing room,” he snapped. He slid open a carved-wood door, leading to a sumptuously-decorated room—more red velvet and golden brocade. Jon found it a little overwhelming, but then, when he had gotten an actual sofa in his flat he had considered it a major life step and had not done anything to personalize his flat any further. Miss Stone went ahead of him into the drawing room, giving the blond that same radiant smile, and he watched the man look slightly dazed for a moment.

“Sorry, I didn’t get your name,” she said sweetly, almost coyly, as though she’d been too nervous to ask earlier.

“Lancel,” he replied stiffly, trying to fight against the charm. “Just sit down, both of you, and Mr Lannister will be with …one of you or the other… shortly.”

Lancel shut the drawing room door, leaving them in cramped quarters together. Neither of them sat down.

They were left alone in the drawing room, now. Evidence of the Lannister fortune dripped from every surface: from the heavy red brocade drapes, positioned just-so to let in the appropriate amount of washed sunlight while blocking the appropriate amount of view of the street, to the carved bookshelf bearing first editions of medical textbooks, to the gold-framed original Picasso hanging above the fireplace. Everything was immaculate, placed in exactly the right place.

Tywin Lannister would have been a rich man in his own right, but the Lannisters were a long, long line of wealthy men; anyone who knew the more established English families could not think of the Lannister name without immediately thinking of gold. It helped that the Lannisters themselves were also known for their thick, gleaming blonde hair, and evidence of that too was everywhere: elegant framed pictures of four generations of Lannisters dotted the bookshelves and other surfaces. Cersei Baratheon the supermodel, who even at age fifty-five had near waist-length golden hair; Jaime Lannister the football player, Cersei's twin brother, who still had a thick head of hair that was barely touched with silver and no thinner than it had been at age twenty-five; Cersei's three children, whose heads were all crowned with that same gold hair... And Tywin himself, and his own brother and parents.

Jon studied the photographs, trying to avoid having to interact with Miss Stone, and luckily, the door clicked open once more before he ran out of photographs to examine, revealing Tywin Lannister himself.

He was in his mid-seventies but had the long, lean body of a man in his prime; though it was barely nine o'clock he was already dressed in trousers and the vest of a three-piece suit, the white shirt immaculately starched and crisp as fine stationery. His blond hair was close-cropped and shot through with silver, and his leonine eyes took in the sight of them both, recognition sparking in them when he spotted Jon. Lancel was scrambling after him like a rodent, holding a suit jacket.

"Jon Snow. It's been …perhaps fourteen years? Fifteen in a week, I suppose." He had been at the Stark funeral too.

"Good memory, sir," Jon replied, stepping forward and shaking Tywin's hand. Tywin's eyes lingered on him for a moment before he turned his attention to Miss Stone. There was a flash—or had he imagined it?—of something like need as that precise gaze measured her, but it was gone in an instant. 

"And you must be the private investigator that my son hired," he deduced summarily. "I must admit, that's the first clever thing he's done in years."

"Alayne Stone. My personal assistant contacted you," Miss Stone said crisply, stepping forward and shaking Tywin's hand as well.

"Well, follow me, both of you. I've got twenty-five minutes until my driver will pick me up. I have a board meeting at Chelsea and Westminster at ten o'clock, so let's not dally." Tywin shrugged into the suit jacket that Lancel had been holding out for him, and then turned to lead them out of the drawing room.

"Both of us?" Jon prompted, raising his brows. Tywin glanced over his shoulder.

"Yes, both of you. I made an appointment with both of you—you're hardly going to ask different questions, I assume,” he replied dispassionately.

Jon bristled and glanced back at Miss Stone, who looked rather feline in her satisfaction, before looking back at Tywin to make a fresh appeal. 

"As you know, Mr Lannister, I'm with the Metrop—"

"—Yes, you're with that circus of monkeys run by Jeor Mormont. Forgive me if I do not take the Metropolitan Police too seriously, Detective Inspector Snow; I've spent many a surgery cleaning up the Met's mistakes and messes," Tywin said shortly. "And I've seen the money my son is paying Miss Stone; it is no small amount. He might as well get his money's worth—or, .should I say, _my_ money’s worth.”

Jon tried not to scowl at Miss Stone as she breezily passed by him to follow Tywin, and he reluctantly hastened after them, into Tywin's personal study.

** _Sansa_ **

Tywin's study was no less well-decorated than the drawing room: it had the same staged effect. A gilded bar cart bearing an untouched cut-crystal decanter of whiskey sat beneath the picture window, and a fire was roaring in the fireplace. She highly doubted that Tywin noticed or enjoyed the personal comforts provided by the study; rather, these contributed to the image of success to which he so carefully tended. Tywin Lannister reeked of repression, of a man so tightly wound and pragmatic that she could not possibly imagine him understanding the beauty of the painting above the fireplace, delighting in the flowers placed on his desk, or relishing the taste of that whiskey—undoubtedly of the highest caliber—at all.

Sansa and Jon sat in plush mahogany and brocade chairs across from Tywin's desk, and Lancel slouched in, bearing a trembling tray of red and white toile-printed china and a french press. Disgustedly, Tywin motioned swiftly for him to set the tray down on his desk. Lancel clumsily poured coffee for each of them in chilly silence, and then scuttled out.

"Mr Lannister, I'm here to get a fuller picture of the night that Shae went missing—as well as the _entire _context," Sansa cut in as soon as she and Jon had taken their cups, placing heavy emphasis on 'entire' to get Tywin's attention and, hopefully, stroke his ego. Tywin sat back in his chair, observing her with some interest.

"What cock and bull story did my son feed you?"

"Well, why don't you tell me what _really_ happened, and then we'll compare notes?" Sansa asked. She felt Jon looking at her; she ignored his gaze. Tywin sighed.

"I must admit, I'm not well-versed on what happened. As far as I know, my son was shacking up with some whore in his flat. A foul habit, but as long as he was private about it, I felt it was none of my business."

"Did you ever meet the whore?" Jon cut in. Sansa was surprised by his choice of word, but thought he must be using the same tactic as her. She chanced a glance at him, and saw that he indeed was: he had, like her, adopted a mirror-image of Tywin's pose, and was matching the cadence and language of his words. Outright flattery would not do; a subtler approach would be necessary to get Tywin to warm to them, to divulge valuable information.

"No, of course not. Snow, I am a busy man. I regularly leave my home before nine in the morning and do not return until well after nine at night. I hardly have time to drop by, and as far as I know, he had only been involved with her for a few months. She's not the first whore to be subsidized by Lannister cash and she won't be the last, knowing him."

"So what else do you know about what happened?" Sansa pressed, before Jon could get in another question. She tried to stop herself from leaning forward, as though edging him out of a race.

Tywin shrugged, palms up.

"The whore went missing, Tyrion called me extremely late that night, furiously spewing some nonsense about how I was always trying to ruin his life. Next thing I know I'm receiving a call from Miss Stone's secretary asking to meet to discuss the disappearance of Shae Lorath. I didn't even recognize the name until Lancel reminded me."

"Tyrion called you?"

"Yes, though like all normal people, I was asleep, as it was well after three in the morning, so I only got the call on my answering machine. I deleted it already; I do apologize, but I found the message embarrassing and juvenile and thus deleted it—not for my sake so much as Tyrion's."

"That was kind of you. You're a devoted father," Sansa remarked.

"Yet Tyrion named you as one of the main potential kidnappers of Shae," Jon cut in. Tywin's nostrils flared.

“Yes, I suppose I am likely to be a suspect, given the argument my son and I had had that same day,” Tywin said exasperatedly. “I ask you, though, why on earth I would kidnap his whore after informing him—“

“—You were going to cut him off from his trust fund,” Sansa interjected. She felt Jon glance at her in the barest hint of surprise, but he said nothing. Tywin rolled his eyes.

“It is not surprising to me that in the midst of his crisis about his 'true love' he found the time to mention that to you. That is only partly correct: I had informed him that if he did not keep his new residence he would be cut off, and informed him that day that I would be relieving him of his duties as wealth manager for our family, and passing that responsibility onto Petyr Baelish.” Tywin glanced at Jon. “You will likely recall Baelish, as he was a close friend of Catelyn Stark.”Sansa watched Jon nod.

“Why did you relieve Tyrion of his duties?”

“Because in spite of my son being a brilliant mind of finance—he’s got more brains than Cersei and Jaime put together, not that that really amounts to much—he is dreadful with his own money. He was draining his account on whores, gambling, and drink at an admirable rate. It was an embarrassment, not that I am unused to being shamed by my children.”

“You are the father to an extremely successful wealth manager, an internationally-renowned footballer, and a supermodel who is listed alongside the likes of Gisele," Jon countered. "That seems like an impressive track record to me."

"Yes, in name they are successful, but apparently the Lannister name is not worth any respect on their part," Tywin dismissed with a short, terse wave of his hand. "Scandal after scandal, rumor after sordid rumor...I hardly know where any of them get it. My wife and I lived quiet, respectable lives. Fortunately Cersei took Robert's surname and now she can tarnish whatever was left of the Baratheon name with her nonsense."

"Who told you that Tyrion was living with his whore?" Sansa asked, keenly aware of how Tywin's eyes kept straying to the elegant clock on the mantel. They only had minutes left; Chelsea and Westminster hospital was at least twenty minutes away, even in good traffic. Tywin looked surprised.

"I don't recall. It might have been Cersei, it might have been Tyrion himself, as part of his little performance of rebellion."

"Where were you the night that Shae disappeared? This was Friday, November the seventeenth," Jon said. Sansa wanted to roll her eyes. The least important, least valuable question—they could have simply asked at the very end.

"Let's see. I attended a benefit hosted by the Tyrells at the Royal Opera house that evening. I believe I left here at approximately seven forty five; I would have left earlier, but Roose Bolton's son was picking me up, and he was late."

Sansa's tongue seemed to be too heavy. She felt her belly turn to lead. She had known, she had known—so why did she feel so sick?

"Roose Bolton's son picked you up? Don't you have your own driver?"

"Yes, I don't believe you ever met Ramsay, Snow. He recently took an interest in the charity ball circuit—trying to make a name for himself, I believe, perhaps interested in a title—and has been exerting admirable efforts in trying to make the right friends. He picked me up and attempted to woo me with Italian wine—apparently he did not learn, in his research, that I do not drink wine—and a tacky limousine, and then spent the entire benefit slavering strategically all over the Tyrell girl...I do not recall her name. Margaret? Mary?" He rolled his eyes again. "At any rate, I was at the benefit for most of the evening. I returned just before midnight, and went to bed around one o'clock."

"Can anyone confirm these details?" Jon pressed, writing quickly in his notebook. Sansa was annoyed to see how similar his style of note-taking was to hers.

"Yes," Tywin said, his lip curling in annoyance, "for starters, the entirety of the guest list of the Tyrell benefit, not to mention Ramsay Bolton, his driver, and my household staff."

“Can you provide some names of the people with whom you interacted at the benefit?” Jon asked.

“My staff can probably provide you with a guestlist,” Tywin said irritably. He made a show of checking his watch. “Lancel,” he called, and the door exploded open: evidently Lancel had been lingering outside the door. “Forgive me, but I will be late if I dawdle here much longer. Lancel can show you both out.”

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Lannister,” Sansa said quickly. They watched Tywin stride out of the room, and Sansa tried not to round on Jon. She took deep, calming breaths.

“This way. I have your coats,” Lancel said, showing them out of Tywin’s study. “Have a nice day,” he said shortly, and all but pushed them out onto the Knightsbridge street.

Jon turned to face her as she rapidly typed into her mobile.

“If you were curious about the Tyrell benefit’s guest list, _The Guardian’s_ society section has it,” she said tightly, holding up her mobile and pointing to the screen. Jon’s lips twisted into a sneer.

“I apologize, Miss Stone—I unfortunately am looking for a conviction, and you are looking for an answer,” he said coldly.

“I didn’t realize they were not the same thing.”

“They’re not. One is based on evidence and is supported by long-standing laws; the other is based on pretty words that will make your client give you more money.” He nodded to her mobile. “If you do a bit of looking around, by the way, you’ll find that Tyrion Lannister attended that benefit as well—though he did not mention this in the statement he gave the police, and I doubt he mentioned it to you, as none of your questions hinted at that, and Tywin did not allude to it, either.”

Sansa tried not to let her smirk falter, and she crossed her arms over her chest. The mention of Ramsay had thrown her off-balance; she hadn’t anticipated hearing that name from Tywin Lannister. Now she felt not one but two steps behind, in a race that mere moments ago she thought she had been winning.

Why was this a race, though?

She stood a little taller. Sansa Stark might have been unsettled by such a turn of events, but Sansa Stark was dead. Alayne Stone wasn’t unsettled by anything. Alayne Stone didn’t even know Ramsay Bolton, or Jon Snow. And so, Alayne Stone smiled back at Jon; she smiled her most radiant smile.

“You’re right. Well, clearly I’m no match for the Metropolitan Police—and certainly no match for _you_.” She took her sunglasses and gloves from her purse, and donned them, feeling Jon watching her carefully. “I’ll try to stay out of your way. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another appointment.”

She held out her gloved hand, and Jon shook it firmly though his eyes were questioning.

“Appointment? With whom?” he called after her as she turned on her heel. She looked back at him and flashed him another winning smile, but did not say another word.

As soon as she was a safe distance away, however, she felt herself begin to crumble. Her contacts were making her eyes burn, but it still felt like she was about to cry. She stopped at the gates to Hyde Park and hid behind a stone pillar and let out a shaking breath, then drew in a breath, but it did not seem to fill her lungs, and then, suddenly, she could not seem to breathe.

Her scars, her ugly scars, seemed to burn as though fresh wounds all over again.

She couldn’t do this. Brienne had been right. The risk was too great. Alayne Stone was fearless, it was true, but too many had sacrificed too much for her to become Alayne Stone. One brush with Ramsay would doom her, she knew it.

She’d have to tell Tyrion she couldn’t do the case. She’d have to return the cheque.

** _Jon_ **

The sun had set and traffic was piling up along the Embankment, with dozens of tourists crowding Westminster Pier. Jon disliked leaving so early—it was only five—but he had an appointment and his job depended upon him keeping it.

Dr. R’hllor’s office was quite close to New Scotland Yard, as many of her dealings were with the Met. It was only a short walk along Whitehall to her office, a sedate walk-up surrounded by posh pubs and consulates. He was buzzed into the checkered entranceway; the stairs off to the immediate right led him up one storey to the cramped, windowless waiting room. Her door was closed, which meant she was with a client, so he dropped into one of the too-small chairs and examined his mobile to kill the time and take his mind off his anxiety.

**Arya** [14:09:27]: so apparently rickon is a rapper now

**Arya** [14:10:11]: and by rapper i mean he is performing at some club in soho this friday

**Arya** [14:10:56]: hes rapping about the accident

**Arya** [14:11:12]: jon.

**Arya** [14:11:45]: kind of freaking out rn ngl

**Arya** [14:12:17]: jon answer your phone asshole

Jon thought of the idea that he had been weighing in his mind all day. It was too eerie of a coincidence, that the very woman who had been the subject of those photographs—and therefore the object of Bran’s obsession—had happened to be the private investigator he had met this morning outside of Tywin Lannister’s house. It had to be; she was near-identical to the subject of Meera’s pictures. He had been toying with whether to bring it up with Arya—for he would_ never_ bring it up with Bran—but clearly this was not a good time. He needed to get those photographs again and compare. He needed to get them and he needed to see Miss Alayne Stone again.

**Jon** [17:09:12]: Sorry, Arya. Just looked at my mobile now. Has Rickon ever rapped before?

**Arya** [17:09:52]: NOPE

**Arya** [17:10:36]: SHOULD BE TOTALLY FINE RIGHT

Jon’s fingers hovered over the screen as he considered his response, but he heard the door click, and he hastily stuffed his mobile away. Dr. R’hllor was peering around the door, her glasses turned opaque by the reflection of the fluorescent lighting.

“Jon Snow,” she greeted softly. “I apologize for the wait.”

He forced a smile and then rose from his chair at her beckoning gesture, and followed her inside her office.

It was darker in her office—the sun was setting and evidently she hadn’t thought to turn on her lights yet. The room was heady with the thick scent of her perfume, which always gave him a headache and made him feel vaguely sick and sleepy. She was dressed in a slim-fitting dark red pencil skirt and a white blouse, and he noticed that when she sat back down in the leather chair across from him, she was toying with one of the buttons of her blouse. It was buttoned perhaps one too low, showing an angular clavicle and the subtle swell of cleavage. Jon wondered if Stannis had just left—she had a separate exit for patients to leave through. He dropped into the chair across from her, shedding his wool coat.

“You look suspicious,” she remarked softly, settling her notepad atop her crossed slender legs.

“I’m told that’s just how my face looks,” he shot back, trying to resist the reflex to look down at her hand toying with the button of her blouse.

“I wonder if that’s a good thing or a bad thing in your profession,” she mused, tilting her head to the side and studying him. She waited a long time for his response, but he merely returned her gaze steadily. He didn’t know why she made him feel so defensive, so defiant. She was supposedly helping him, healing him, though he never felt better after seeing her.

“I don’t know if I like the new dose,” he finally said, when he couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “Of the Lamictal. I feel weird.”

“Weird?” she prompted almost innocently.

“My head hurts all the time, and I feel like I’m grinding my teeth in my sleep, or something. I wake up and my jaw hurts.”

“Those should go away shortly. We thought the lower dose was ineffective,” she replied, scrawling something on her notepad. He didn’t know why it bothered him so much to see her taking notes. It should have made him feel more secure, that she was so diligent about her records, but it made him feel paranoid. He didn’t know what she was writing, didn’t know what conclusions she was drawing.

“What if there isn’t an effective dose?”

She looked up at him again, still toying with that damn button. He would rather die than give into the urge to look at her hand and, more specifically, where it rested. He was grinding his teeth, clenching the arms of the chair in sweaty palms.

“Tell me about your first two days back on the job. I was thinking about you,” she said, changing the subject. He thought her words were deliberately provocative. “Wondering how it went,” she added.

“It was fine,” he said shortly. “I’m sure you already know how it was, since Mormont has to be in contact with you about me. He won’t give me my gun back until I’ve solved this case without going mental again.”

“I haven’t spoken with Mormont,” she said simply, making another note. “Do you miss your gun?”

“Of course I miss it. I feel naked without it.” He wanted to bite his tongue. He watched her eyes, so odd a brown that they looked almost red in some lights, glimmer as though she had found some buried treasure.

“Naked?”

“Vulnerable,” he clarified shortly. “Not everything is sexual.”

“You were the one who used the word. You were the one who made the connection,” she said lightly. He watched her pen, waiting for her to scrawl another note, but she wrote nothing. “Sex is on your mind, I take it?”

_She looked like Sansa; she looked like a poor man’s Sansa Stark…_

“Not especially,” he said.

A long silence passed. He could hear the traffic outside. His head was throbbing. He thought of vomiting outside on the street last night, he thought of Miss Alayne Stone, he thought of how he had almost shaken Meera. “I don’t want to take this medication anymore.”

“Is it giving you negative sexual side effects?” she asked mildly.

“No,” he said too quickly. “I mean, I wouldn’t know. I haven’t…” he cast around helplessly, feeling his neck flush.

“You haven’t had sex?”

“Right.”

“Have you masturbated?”

“How is this relevant?”

“Many patients complain about negative sexual side effects on these kinds of medication,” she explained, adjusting her glasses. “Anorgasmia, usually.”

“I wouldn’t know if that’s a side effect,” he finally admitted. “I haven’t…tried to have an orgasm…in three months.” _God._ Even saying the word made his face burn with shame. He had spent years going undercover among prostitutes and he still couldn’t say ‘orgasm’ out loud.

“Not since Ygritte,” she confirmed. “So what side effects are bothering you, then?”

“I told you. My head hurts and I don’t feel like myself.”

“You didn’t feel like yourself on the previous ten medications we tried.” She flipped back through her notes. “Nor did you ‘feel like yourself’ during your hospitalization.” She flipped back to her current page and looked up at Jon. “There’s no shame in needing medication, Jon.”

“I don’t feel shame.”

“You seem to feel nothing but shame. Shame about not having your gun, shame about publicly displaying emotion, shame about even saying the word ‘orgasm,’ shame about failing to save Ygritte…” she trailed off. “What else are you feeling ashamed of?”

“I’m not feeling ashamed,” he insisted bluntly.

They were quiet. Jon picked at his nails; it was the only sound in the office for a long moment.

“Jon, I can’t help if you don’t let me inside,” she reminded him. His neck felt hot again. She had to be doing it on purpose, had to be choosing provocative words on purpose. “No one knows what you say in this room. I don’t record anything, remember? And I don’t give specifics to Mormont, or anyone else.”

He kept picking at his nails. _I think you had no cousinly feelings for her at all. _He was grinding his teeth again, his jaw was throbbing, and the bridge of his nose ached like it was about to start bleeding. He pictured blood gushing forth like well water from a spigot.

“I had dinner with the Starks last night.” He picked at a hangnail, tearing flesh. A pinprick of red appeared. “Bran—he’s the one who was in the accident, the one who was crippled—is in a bad way. His girlfriend—“ He drew in a deep breath. “—His girlfriend is a photographer, and took these pictures of a woman she insists is Sansa. But Sansa is one of the Starks who died in the car accident.”

“The one whose body was never found,” Melisandre confirmed softly.

“Right. Her.” His nails were already brutally short, but he picked anyway. “She had red hair.” He swallowed over a lump forming in his throat. It was hard to breathe. “I never got on with her.” Dr. R’hllor had red hair, too.

“Why not?”

He shrugged.

“Dunno. We just had nothing in common. I don’t think I was ever alone with her, in the fifteen years I lived with the Starks. I was close with everyone else, but not with her. Robb was my best friend. I’ve never been as close to anyone as I was to him. And I’m still close to Arya. Even Rickon, who’s only nineteen, I’m closer to than I was to Sansa.”

He couldn’t speak for a long time. It was always hard to talk about Robb.

“Do you think the girl in the pictures could be Sansa?”

He shook his head.

“No. I said as much during the dinner. And afterward…” He closed his eyes. “I wanted to shake her.”

“Shake whom?”

“Meera. Bran’s girlfriend.” He shook his head, mopping his face. “Sorry, I’m not making much sense. When we were all leaving, she took me aside—no, wait. Maybe I took her aside.” He struggled to remember. “I had too much to drink. Accidentally. It’s all a bit foggy now. Anyway, she told me she thought I was lying about it not being Sansa. She said I—“

The words were stuck in his throat. Revulsion roiled in his gut. He looked up, at long last. Dr. R’hllor was staring at him. He looked down again. Closed his eyes. It was easier, somehow, if he couldn’t see anything. “She said I wanted Sansa. That she’d always thought so.”

“Did you?”

“I never thought so,” he stammered. Like a floodgate, though, the words came tumbling out. “But what if I did? What if that was why I loved Ygritte? She looked—she looked like Sansa. Meera even said so. I’d never made the connection, never thought about it, but now I can’t stop thinking about it. I never would do anything to—I never would ever have touched Sansa, or even thought about it. But what if I did, subconsciously?”

“You might have.”

Jon opened his eyes at her surprisingly blasé tone. She shrugged when he looked at her. “Strange thoughts—dark thoughts—occur to all of us sometimes. Sometimes I think about throwing myself in front of the Underground—but I would never do it. Our minds are mysterious beasts, and sometimes they serve us our worst fears in the form of compulsions. Did you ever have such thoughts about Arya?”

“God, no,” he shuddered. The very thought of it made him sick.

“But you’re not so sure with Sansa.”

“I _don’t know_. I don’t remember.” He pressed on the bridge of his nose. “Why do I need medication? I’m already in therapy.”

“Nominally, yes.” She wrote something down. At Jon’s look, she sighed. “You have a pattern, Jon Snow. You open up halfway and then retreat. In the months I’ve been seeing you, you’ve made little progress.”

“How would you even know if I were making progress? How could you _possibly_ define that?” His anger was rising. “Progress towards _what_?”

“Progress toward a place of mental stability, of boundaries between your personal and professional lives, towards even _having_ a personal life. Mormont was worried about you long before your episode that landed you here.”

“My uncle and the girl I loved had just died. Forgive me if I didn’t take it in stride,” he spat.

“And when your cousin’s girlfriend made an uncomfortable and offensive suggestion to you last night, you came close to shaking her. Your words, not mine,” she countered, still calm as ever. He despised her for it. “What did you do, in the three months that you did not work? You came here, spending a total of three hours per week here. What did you do with the other hours?”

“I …saw friends. I worked on my flat. I read.” All lies. He had done little more than lay in bed and stare at the ceiling and try not to think. He had been catatonic with guilt.

She didn’t even bother disputing that. She just stared at him. Toying with that damn button again.

“You didn’t have sex for ten years before Ygritte. You haven’t had sex since then.”

“Why does it always come back to sex?”

“Why does it? Indeed. I’ve been wondering that myself, Jon Snow. You’re afraid of sex. You’re obsessed with prostitutes. You’re terrified of having inappropriate thoughts. You can’t use sexual terms without burning up in shame.”

“I’m obsessed with prostitutes because it is my job,” he said flatly. “Do your other patients feel fine about having sexual fantasies about their cousins?” He let out a shaky breath. “Sex is private.”

“This room is private.” She cast a pale, elegant hand, gesturing to the space around them. “No one here but us.” She smiled. “Do you touch yourself less, now?”

“I don’t any differently than I ever did before.”

“The first thing you told me was that you hadn’t had sex for ten years before Ygritte. That’s an unusual thing, especially for a handsome man. Why not have sex? Why even mention to me that you had avoided it?”

“I was trying to explain why she was important.”

“She was important because you fucked her?”

The language was unexpected. He drew in a sharp breath.

“She was important, therefore we had sex,” he said levelly.

“So there was no one important before that?”

“No.”

“What about Sansa?”

“I’m leaving.”

“I have to report it to Mormont if you terminate a session early.”

“Why do we have to talk about sex? Can’t we talk about anything else?”

“You wanted to talk about the possibility that you had inappropriate sexual fantasies about your cousin.”

“I didn’t _want _to talk about it. I just—“ he halted. “Why would she even think that I had—unless I did something, or acted a certain way? Why wasn’t I close with Sansa?” He fisted his hands, trying not to cover his face. “What if—what if everyone thought that I—that I had feelings for Sansa?”

“Is that why Meera’s words angered you?”

“No.” He let out a hot, shaking breath. “She made me angry because she’s just stoking Bran’s obsession with Sansa’s death. It means he can’t move on. And those pictures…there’s just no way she’s alive. The woman hardly looked like her. And when I pointed out these _logical_ points, she said all of that.”

He could not explain to Melisandre what Sansa Stark had once been to him. How many times had he, crouching in the dirt and sweating, looked up to her window, the one on the very end of the magnificent Stark home, and looked so hastily from her window?

The appointment ended, but Jon had been cast back in time, to seventeen years earlier: a time of filmy lace curtains and fine vintage cars always rolling past him on Winterfell drive; being _allowed_ to tag along with Ned and Robb and Theon and the others as they went hunting, their boots the finest leather and their Barbour coats more expensive than anything Jon would ever own; flashes of Sansa’s copper hair as she swung around corners and tossed her hair and laughed.

The old resentment was bubbling up again, shameful though it was. He had been treated practically like a son by Ned Stark, and had found in Robb a best friend. Not to mention the significant amount of money that he had been left… He felt badly for his resentment. The Starks had given him every good thing in his life he had ever had, besides Shireen, and he owed them everything.

The very least he could do, he decided, was to help Bran. 

He took out his mobile.

**Jon** [18:22:08]: Can you send me Meera’s photos of that woman?

**Jon** [18:22:21]: I’m going to do some digging.

Jon watched the three dots come up and flicker, for a long time. Then, finally:

**Bran** [18:24:17]: thanks so much, jon

The photographs of the woman popped up. Jon decided to examine them in his flat, and walked home in the rain. He stopped for a takeaway on the way, and in the silence of his flat, he sat at his kitchen table and emailed himself the photographs, the better to study them.

It was, without a doubt, Miss Alayne Stone. A prickle of something ran up Jon’s spine as he scrolled through them. A disturbing coincidence, in a city of over eight million…

He settled back into his chair, lost in thought. He now had proof that the woman was not Sansa, but of course, there was something more to Miss Stone, wasn’t there? The black bob was a wig, the contacts fake-colored.

Perhaps it was merely handy to have a disguise, when you were a private detective. Perhaps she made a habit of masking her real appearance, for her own safety. 

And yet…

He had always been suspicious, always dug too far, when others would have given up. His curiosity was piqued, now. It took only moments to find Alayne Stone’s website, and, from there, her business email address.

The email was brief. After he sent it, he felt a pinch of regret that was quickly obliterated.

It felt good to be on the hunt again.


	3. Chapter 3

_And it's my whole heart_

_Weighed and measured inside_

_And it's an old scar_

_Trying to bleach it out_

_And it's my whole heart_

_Deemed and delivered a crime_

**Sansa**

“How can you do this _now_, in light of the vital new information I've uncovered? We had an _agreement_. I sent you a cheque, Miss Stone!”

Tyrion’s voice was tightly controlled; Sansa had the sense of him gripping his mobile with a sweaty hand. She held her mobile at a distance, thinking of how loud it was in the silence of her office. 

“Well, the cheque in fact bounced,” she told him, fighting the urge to cringe as she brought the mobile back close again, “but I am happy to return the cheque itself to you, for your records. Again, I _am_ sorry—“

“Do you regularly skive off on your promises to clients, Miss Stone?" Tyrion seethed. "Do you just bring us in to your silly, fancy office, then make us relive our trauma all over again, only to—“

“—Mr Lannister,” she interrupted sharply, and sensed movement on the other side of the office door. Brienne was always ready to defend her, even over the phone if need be. 

Sansa Stark would have been crushed by his anger and would have scrabbled to make amends, but Alayne Stone was a coldly pragmatic businesswoman and would not be cowed by such bratty displays. “I have already explained the situation, and unless you did not hear me the first time, I will not do so further. Your case is not possible with my caseload at the moment and that simply is the bottom line. Additionally, I have met the Detective Inspector from the Met who is handling your case. He is highly competent and will do far better than his colleagues who began the case, I can assure you.”

“No, he won’t. Jon Snow is absolutely mental and had a breakdown that landed him in hospitalization and a three-month leave. He was bad news as the sulky, impulsive adolescent that he was and he is bad news now. Do you know he’s not even _allowed_ to carry a gun right now for fear of how impulsively he might—“

“—then don’t give him a gun and don’t insult him as you have insulted me, and I believe you are in good hands, Mr Lannister,” Sansa interrupted pointedly. “I will mail your bounced cheque at once.” 

She rung off, breathless, and watched her mobile buzz along the desk with vibration as Tyrion called her back immediately—once, twice, three times—before at last giving up. For a moment she held her breath, waiting for another attempt, but her mobile did not buzz again. Tyrion Lannister had given up. 

Sansa was shaken by his anger—but she was also still shattered enough by yesterday's events to be sure that this was the right thing to do. Dancing too close to Ramsay’s world was simply too dangerous. His involvement in Shae's disappearance was within the realm of possibility—there was no one as inventively and actively destructive and cruel as Ramsay and none knew it better than her—but more than likely, Shae's disappearance was unrelated to Ramsay and Sansa would be placing herself in a path of deadly danger for nothing. 

Better to let the Met handle this one.

Speaking of the Met... Sansa pushed her mobile away and turned to her laptop open on her desk. Her email was still open, as it had been all morning, to the brusque and presumptuous email that she had received well after midnight last night. It had jolted her from the muddled, underwater half-sleep that she had managed to sink into, and she had blearily looked at the notification on her mobile, wondering if she were imagining the _Jon.Snow@metpolice-uk.org _on her screen. After sleep had faded, she had sat up in bed, her lamp on, staring at her mobile and unable to bring herself to open the notification. It had taken her hours to unlock her mobile and read the email. 

Every time she saw it, the audacity of it made her heart rev beneath her breastbone like an engine. She read it again, as though in reading it she would decipher some coded message. But it was as brief and straightforward as an email could be; there was nothing further to be gleaned from it. 

_ ** Miss Stone, I would like to meet with you. I am available tomorrow after work.  ** _

_ ** Best, ** _

_**JS**_

She’d not replied yet. Given the time he had sent it, it could have meant tonight, or tomorrow night. She would have to reply and clarify, if she didn't simply ignore it entirely—which she still might do. She would have to reply and clarify which night he meant; they would have to choose a suitable location; she would need to figure out an outfit. She would need to anticipate what he might hope to get out of this outing and prepare, from every angle. It was dancing far too close to danger, and hadn’t she just turned down Tyrion’s case to specifically avoid that? 

_ He’s not even allowed to carry a gun...  _

She never could resist her own curiosity—after all, there was a reason she had chosen the path of a private investigator—and that inherent curiosity was welling up within her now, and had been building all morning like a rising tide. He was on mood stabilizers; he wasn't allowed a gun anymore; he had voluntarily gotten in touch with her. All of these were variables that did not fit with the boy she had known, and it was killing her that she could not fit the pieces together. 

What did she stand to lose if she met with Jon? It could be another chance for him to recognize her, but so far he plainly hadn’t. If he had, she told herself, he would have hardly kept it to himself—he would have at least told Arya. The only other thing she stood to lose would be her time, and without a boyfriend or family or social life, time was something she had in spades. She had too much of it; she was eager to get rid of it.

And, as far as what she stood to gain: it would give her a chance to sate her own curiosity, and this was no small thing. It would be a thing to fill her mind, to occupy her when the emptiness got to be too much, and this chance was utterly seductive. Her clients had become rote: all divorcees looking to build evidence for custody, or grotesquely jealous older gentlemen with young, tacky girlfriends... None of them were enough of a challenge. None of them were interesting. But the man she had run into outside of Tywin Lannister's walk-up—he was a challenge. He was something different. He was a puzzle that needed to be solved...

At a loss, Sansa slumped back in her plush grey chair, and looked through the part in the curtains out onto the crawling, insect-like traffic of Charing Cross Road. 

Jon Snow was the only person from her past that she had not so carefully watched over the years. Perhaps she should have, for it was clear that life had not treated him well. Why was he on mood stabilizers? Why had he gone on leave from the Met? When had he left the army and joined the Met? Had he always intended on being a detective? Was he married? And _what_ had he done to have his gun taken from him?

Manicured fingers hovered over the keys. _I'll need a new manicure, _she thought absently. _Black, or dark red. Something cruel. __And a good outfit. Something ruthless but casual. _

Maybe she really was looking for trouble. Maybe Brienne would have to pull her back from the brink of this one, too. 

_ ** Thank you.I am briefly available this evening, between 8:15 and 9:00. Meet at Enterprise?  ** _

_ ** Regards, ** _

_ ** Alayne  ** _

Sansa sat back, exhilarated and dizzy as though she'd run for the train, and clapped her hands to her warm cheeks. The little office seemed airless. 

_Sent. _

What the _hell_ had she done? _Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck—_

The reply was almost instant. 

_**Sure. In Holborn? See you there at 8:15 tonight. ** _

Sansa closed the laptop with robotic movements and stared ahead in shock. Her blood was pounding, her tongue thick in her mouth. Flashes of a younger time—Jon’s disdainful gaze as she tried and failed to play pool with him and her brothers; the soft smooth flesh of his neck after haircuts; the way he’d always been sullen and remote after hunting trips in the country with her family and their lauded friends (Jaime Lannister had once proclaimed Jon the best shot with a hunting rifle that he’d ever seen and Robb had been madly jealous)—haunted and falsed through her mind. 

What would it be like to sit face to face in a booth with grown-up Jon Snow in a darkened pub? What did he want out of this encounter, and how could she best protect herself from his shrewd grey gaze? 

—All things she should have wondered _before_ sending the email. 

She could always cancel. 

Canceling would be the right thing to do. 

But Sansa made no move to open her laptop. She only stared ahead, her skin tingling with life. Everything suddenly seemed more vivid and immediate: the sounds of traffic, the feel of her tongue in her mouth, the way her shoe was digging into her heel. What might he order to drink? What might he expect her to order? She knew now that he was on mood stabilizers—was he even allowed to drink while taking those? She thought of what Petyr had said about their Stark dinner and how Jon had gotten drunk despite being prohibited from drinking. It seemed impossible that the rigid and sullen boy who had run off to join the army could become so unraveled, but they all had changed; perhaps Jon was as different now as she was. 

“Miss Stone?” 

Brienne appeared in the doorway, bearing cups of Lady Grey for them both. “_I_ think you made the right decision,” she volunteered, and it took Sansa a moment to remember she was speaking of Tyrion—Brienne did not know about Jon Snow. Brienne set the ivory mug down before Sansa on the desk, and sat down in the brocade chair across from her. It was a routine of theirs: often, since they had got this office, they had spent many a grey afternoon like this, drinking tea and mulling over the details of a client’s case, comfortable enough to allow long periods of companionable silence to pass between them. They had done their best thinking like this, and it was one of the high points of Sansa's life as Alayne. 

But keeping her meeting with Jon Snow from Brienne put up a wall between them and Sansa resented Jon even more for this. She could not quite feel comfortable around Brienne when she was keeping something so significant from the woman. Brienne was her only true confidante. Sansa would have given anything to speak with _someone_ about this meeting with Jon, but there was no one. Jaime might not have judged her for it, but to see him was dangerous—the man was a paparazzi magnet—and besides, he had an uncanny ability to bluntly speak the truths that Sansa was trying to deny. She was not sure she wanted to hear what Jaime night have to say about this; she was not sure she could bear it. 

“I spent the morning tailing Bat Dad,” Brienne said now, after loudly sipping her own too-hot tea. “All he did was sit outside the St John’s Wood flat in his car, watching the children through binoculars. It was all rather well-intentioned stalking, per usual.” 

“Well, Shella will inevitably find it interesting, even if we don’t,” Sansa dismissed, stirring her own tea. They often enjoyed picking apart the psychology of their clients together, and Shella Whent—self-absorbed and drenched in heirloom Cartier—was an old favorite, but Sansa couldn’t bring herself to care today. Part of her was grieving for the loss of the case with Tyrion Lannister, even as part of her was still reeling and shivering from even the possibility of an encounter with Ramsay Bolton—and then a deeper, darker part of her was forward in time, to the moment when she slid into the booth in the Enterprise across from Jon Snow and felt that piercing grey gaze on her. The moment was expansive, billowing, and intoxicating as perfume. 

Brienne was studying her, those large blue eyes filled with empathy. Brienne’s kindness and patience was inexhaustible but today Sansa found it almost claustrophobic. “I—I think I’m going to head out early today, Brienne,” Sansa suddenly said. “Thank you for the tea. And feel free to take the afternoon off yourself.”

“Are you unwell, Miss Stone?” Brienne asked, rising with Sansa. 

“I feel a bit off. I think a bit of shopping and an evening of wine and bad television will help,” she promised with a bracing smile. 

** Jon **

He’d forgotten to take his Lamictal. It only occurred to Jon as he was leaving New Scotland Yard, carrying his bike helmet and thinking that the windy, grey day had a different and new brightness to it. He had felt imbalanced all morning, at times wildly optimistic and others muddled and all at odds with his own body, and had been wondering at the feeling for hours until he'd realized that he'd never opened the orange pill bottle that morning. _It's just one dose. What's the worst that could happen?_ He was walking to his black Honda bike, lost in musing on this, when he was overtaken by a skinny, coltish blur of a nineteen year old girl in the lot where his bike awaited. 

“Wolfie!” Shireen Baratheon flung her arms around him, and for the first time in months, Jon realized he was grinning helplessly as he returned the hug. On the sidewalk she stumbled back from him, flushed and beaming. 

“Your hair,” Jon realized as Shireen straightened her navy Oxford sweatshirt self-consciously. She blushed and raked a hand over her newly-shorn hair. 

“What do you think?”

The pixie cut put on vicious, unyielding display the scarring she had had for as long as Jon had known her—indeed, he had been there the night she had acquired it—without apology. An evil thing, the burned, mottled flesh had turned what would have been an outgoing, exuberant girl into a timid, faltering, bookish girl. Shireen was only so animated around Jon; to others, she was soft-spoken and awkward as her father, blushing easily and deferring more than she ought to, apologizing for every atom of space she occupied. For years, Shireen had kept her dark hair long, a lank curtain that did not mask the ruined flesh as much as she would have wished or intended. 

Jon could not help it: he was beaming. No one could understand how important this was, or how much strength this must have taken. "Is—is it flattering?" she asked falteringly, tucking one curl behind her ear. 

“I don’t know anything about that stuff, but I love it,” he told her honestly. Shireen matched his smile and fidgeted with the strap of her bag. She was blinking rapidly, laughing a little throatily, and Jon hastily changed the subject to offer her some dignity. “What are you doing here in London, anyway? Don’t you have class?” 

They fell into step together, walking round the corner to the lot where Jon had parked his motorbike. Shireen had named it _Ghost; _when together, they both referred to the bike as Ghost. 

“It's Mum’s birthday, so I figured I’d come down to London and help Dad,” Shireen explained, skipping as they walked. “You know he’s not good at that kind of thing. He hadn’t even got her a birthday present. So I came down to try and get her out of bed. I decorated the house a bit and I'm going to bake a cake tonight. Neither of them will eat it, but...candles make everyone happy, right?”

Jon tried not to think of Stannis, of the back door of Dr. R'hllor's office through which it seemed Stannis had always just walked, of Dr. R'hllor's elegant hand lingering at that damned button. “Anyway, whatever. It’s stupid. Let's talk about literally anything else. How has the first week been?” 

“I’m investigating a private investigator,” Jon began. “You would be interested. She’s very ... well, her clothes look nice, I guess. The sort of stuff you like.” 

Shireen herself only wore sweatshirts, baggy jumpers, and trainers, but Jon knew she was obsessed with fashion. She was always going on about the various Fashion Weeks around the world, and more than once Jon had had to sit through long slideshows on her mobile as she explained to him, with the analytic fervor that only a teenager could have, of the importance of various couture lines. _Do you even _get_ what Tom Ford did for Gucci? _she had demanded once with the breathlessness of an evangelical. She was reading English Literature at Oxford but, if she’d had a little more confidence in herself, she would have done better studying fashion. 

“She? She's a woman? A stylish, mysterious investigator?” Shireen’s laugh was a little too loud; it was unlike her and Jon wondered if her worries about her parents was bleeding over. “Are you going to fall in love with her? It’d be like a TV show.” 

“Hmm, I’ll consider it,” Jon teased. "If it would entertain you." Shireen was often whimsical like this. “I’m meeting her tonight at a pub in Holborn. I think she’s going by a fake name.” 

“That sounds so secretive and cool,” she complained. "I'll never be that cool or mysterious." They came to a stop before Jon’s black motorbike. “Are you going to see her now?”

“No, I’m going to visit a suspect at Chelsea and Westminster,” Jon explained, putting on his helmet. Shireen had always enjoyed hearing bits and pieces of his detective work—though she had been shielded from many of the details of his last case. She had not pried yet, for which he was grateful. She had visited him in hospital in his initial stint and had drawn a comic of him that he cherished more than anything else he owned and that he kept in his nightstand for sleepless, hopeless nights. It was, he knew in his heart, the closest he would ever have to a daughter. It had all started the night she'd gotten those terrible burns: he had been a newly-minted cop, on one of his first calls, not understanding the Met's horror to be called to Stannis Baratheon's home, and had cradled a very young Shireen in a trauma blanket, clumsy and helpless with children. She hadn't wept as they'd waited for the ambulance; she'd asked him, in an unbearably tiny voice, to tell her a story about princesses and knights as he'd held her close, and something within him that he'd thought had died in the army had bloomed to life. When she had been accepted at Oxford he had taken her out for lunch and had been as joyful as if it had been his own child, and his chest had ached at that notion. 

“Can I come?” she asked eagerly. “I won’t be a nuisance, I promise! I’ll just wait in the lobby. I just don’t want to be stuck here with Dad if you’re not here.”

Jon bit his lip and looked around. It wasn’t appropriate, but he doubted he was even going to be able to catch Lannister today. The man was a renowned surgeon; his schedule was likely packed, and Jon had not wanted to risk trying to make another appointment with him ahead of time. Really, he was more curious to see how Lannister's colleagues might react to having a detective from the Met looking for him. 

“Fine,” he conceded, taking his helmet off. “But you’ll stay in the lobby and pretend you don’t know me, got it?” 

“We can take your bike,” Shireen offered, practically bouncing with each step. “I can sit behind you and hold on.”

“Haven’t got a spare helmet. We’ll take the Tube,” Jon told her. They set off to Westminster station on foot. 

A niggling voice wondered at whether this was toeing the line, per Mormont's instruction, but it hardly mattered. The less time Shireen spent around Stannis, the better; even Mormont would have to agree with that one. Even the short time at Oxford—and therefore away from her father—had visibly improved Shireen’s confidence, and Jon wondered how the man would react to his daughter’s blunt haircut. He didn't want to ask, but he wondered if Shireen were truly prepared for it. 

In spite of his worries, the day seemed brighter. Shireen told him of her new friends, other outcasts reading English who were emerging from the trauma of adolescence and beginning to find their footing. She told him of their obscure jokes about Greek mythology and math that few others would understand, of how they delighted in the camaraderie of their weirdness. Jon listened to her happy chatter fondly, and the journey to Chelsea and Westminster passed almost too quickly. Before he was ready, they were walking down Fulham Road to the hospital. Shireen was still chattering about an essay she had written on the Enlightenment. Jon himself had never written such essays; he had gone from the cosseted world of Harrogate to the army. But instead of the resentment he might have felt, he only felt pride. 

Out in front of the hospital, Jon turned to Shireen on the busy sidewalk. Fulham Road boomed and undulated around them. A nauseating, jazzy version of Jingle Bells was blaring from a nearby Boots. Two men dressed sheepishly like Christmas elves parted round them, their tarnished bells rattling tinnily. Shireen was still beaming, her hair turned awkwardly curly by the damp air.

“You stay in the lobby like we said, alright? And walk in _after_ me; pretend you don’t know me,” he warned her. “And not a word of this to Mormont or your father, either." Jon paused, setting a hand on her shoulder briefly. "They would kill me.”

They would have killed him. _He_ would have killed him for this. Jon felt a jolt of unease; the brightness of the day that had so cheered him suddenly seemed harsh, sinister. What the hell had he been thinking?

“I pinky-promise,” she said solemnly, holding out a pinky painted with chipped green nailpolish. Jon rolled his eyes and linked pinkies with her. She reminded him, irresistibly, of Arya’s silly mischief when she had been younger, and he found himself stifling a smile. 

He went inside first, feeling for his badge in the pocket of his dark peacoat. The lobby of Chelsea and Westminster, all linoleum and screaming children, was done up cheaply with foil Christmas decorations that looked like holdovers from previous years, taped to the foggy windows with rippled scotch tape. 

A receptionist at the front desk was scowling as a younger surgeon stood beside her, calmly relaying something to her. He looked familiar: pale blue eyes that were as silvery and reflective as a mirror; tastefully-rumpled dark hair in the way only a rich man could get away with; lips almost too full, keeping him from being quite handsome. He had on scrubs underneath a white coat, a brand-new iPhone glinting in the breast pocket of the white coat. The young surgeon paused, pale eyes alighting on Jon as he approached the front desk. 

“Can I help you, sir?” The cranky receptionist seemed eager for an intrusion. Jon nodded to the surgeon, but the man only shoved his hands in the pockets of his white coat and looked expectantly at him, his mouth twitching like he was trying not to smile.

“Can you tell me whether Mr. Tywin Lannister is here today? Or point me in the direction of his secretary?” Jon didn’t like to flash his badge too much, but he did so now, and the surgeon brightened. 

“Oh, a detective,” he marveled. “Very impressive. I can help you with that. Lannister’s assisting with a case at Cambridge today; any way I can answer any of your questions?” 

He held out a hand to shake. His grip was strong. “Ramsay Bolton. I work with Lannister. Best surgeon I’ve ever seen—not that it is terribly surprising, of course. He’s well-known. I operate with him regularly.” 

Ramsay Bolton. The one who was trying to woo Tywin with car service and alcohol. Jon shook his hand, then dropped it. 

"Cambridge?" 

Bolton placed a hand on Jon's arm, ushering him away from the front desk. 

"Thanks, Camilla," he said over his shoulder, then turned back to Jon. Out of the corner of his eye, Jon spotted Shireen enter the lobby and beeline for a display of hand-made Christmas cards that had been set up. "Yeah, Cambridge. I've had to assist there a few times, too. Their ortho program is in turnover. But I'm sure you don't want to hear about that," Bolton said slyly. "This is so interesting—having a detective here, I mean. It can't be for Mr Lannister. The man's as straight-laced as they come." 

"I can't divulge details, but I'd like to speak with Mr Lannister," Jon said shortly. "Do you know when he'll be back?" 

Bolton shrugged. His gaze lingered somewhere over Jon's shoulder with interest, and just as Jon was wondering what he was looking at, there was a _crash. _Jon glanced over his shoulder. Shireen had knocked over one of the greeting card displays with her backpack, and, against Jon's orders, she met his eyes with a sheepish thumbs-up. Bolton was grinning. 

"Your girlfriend?" 

"She's nineteen," Jon said flatly. Bolton nodded. 

"She looked young," he acknowledged, then, suddenly, stepped closer. Too close. He set a hand on Jon's arm. "Look, I don't want to pry. I keep to myself, and everyone's got their own life, you know? But if you want—" Bolton paused, looking around, then leaned in. Jon resisted the urge to lean back. "—I'm more than willing to talk off the record." 

"I'm police. Everything is on the record," Jon said. Ramsay's eyes glimmered. 

"Like that nineteen year old?" He nodded to Shireen, and Jon flushed. "It's none of my business. I don't judge. Honestly, I just find policework fascinating, and I want to do my part." 

"Your part?" 

Ramsay hesitated. 

"...Mr Lannister is an excellent surgeon. He's the best. But being a great surgeon and a good citizen..." he trailed off, shrugging. "Well, they're not always the same, right?" 

Jon studied Ramsay. He had seen his like before: condescending, privileged men who thought they had a better read on people than the rest of the world; men who enjoyed feeling superior, special, _important. _They were always good for something; they usually had some stray details within their bloated testimonies that proved useful. Jon took his mobile out. 

"Thanks. We need more people like you," he said. "How can I reach you with questions?" 

"You ever seen an antegrade intramedullary nail insertion?" Ramsay asked in a low, thrilling voice. 

"I...can't say I have," Jon admitted, trying not to laugh. Ramsay grinned. 

"You're in luck. I have one before lunch tomorrow. Come by and Camilla will direct you to the right operating theater. We can get lunch afterward. The break will be good—those nails are hell on my spine. You'll have to scrub in, but it'll be wicked cool." 

"Will it?" Jon arched his brows at Ramsay. "I don't know much about surgery." 

"We do it a lot for GSWs," Ramsay replied calmly, looking directly in Jon's eyes. "I think every Met officer should see one. See what it takes to put a human leg back together after a bullet shatters it." He clapped Jon on the arm. "First incision is eleven—get here at ten forty-five. I'll tell Camilla." 

Ramsay was already walking away. "Nice meeting you, Detective. Looking forward to tomorrow," he called over his shoulder. Jon watched him walk away. 

"Who was that?" Shireen had popped up next to him, and Jon shook himself from his reverie. Jon turned to scowl at her as they walked out of Chelsea and Westminster together, back to the cloudy day and holly and brick of Fulham Road. The sky was beginning to darken. The hour with Miss Stone approached. 

"Doesn't matter to you," Jon said vaguely, checking his calendar for tomorrow. "You'd make a terrible detective, just so you know. Everyone in the bloody building could tell we knew each other."

"It was my backpack!" Shireen insisted as they walked. After a moment: "sorry." 

They passed by a glossy florist who was bringing their wares back in. Shireen's eyes lingered on a pot overflowing with pendulous, weighty peonies. "Those are my favorites," she said suddenly, but Jon only half heard her. There was a knot forming in his stomach, and he felt queasy. He was beginning to regret skipping the Lamictal—or was he? Nothing ever felt right anymore and he no longer knew if it was just him or the medication or some other indefinable thing. 

"It's alright," he said at last. "I shouldn't have taken you to begin with." She looked sad, so he elbowed her lightly. "What'd you get your mum for her birthday?" 

"A candle," Shireen said gloomily. "A fancy one, not that she'll care. But her room smells like—" Shireen halted, and continued tentatively. "—like _skin_, and dirty hair," she said in a smaller voice. "No wonder she's depressed." 

They walked in silence for a moment. Jon thought of the confines of his very small, very barren bedroom. No one had visited him during _that_ time—he had not allowed it—but he wondered if his bedroom had smelled like skin. He thought he might be sick. 

"You deserve better," he blurted out, then regretted it. He didn't like to draw attention to what he thought of Shireen's parents. Stannis was his colleague, and generally excellent at his job, personal failings aside. Shireen swung her arms comically as she walked. 

"Someday," she began, as they paused at an intersection, "I'll be swept off my feet and won't have to worry anymore about them." 

"Swept off your feet?" Jon teased. Shireen would not meet his eyes. 

**Sansa**

The Enterprise's facade, pistachio-green panels trimmed with faded checkered tiles, was so set back from Red Lion Road that Sansa almost missed it. She liked that about the old pub; it made her think of Harry Potter and wizards hiding in plain sight. She was always on the lookout for magic in London, little pockets that couldn't be explained away or little mysteries that even she could not solve. 

It was raining now and the cross-street was all in gold. Christmas music was piped into the road from the various pubs around them, and none louder than when she stepped beneath the eaves of the Enterprise and folded her umbrella with hands that would have trembled, had she not so carefully controlled every movement, just in case Jon Snow was there and looking at her. A quick glance into the pub told her nothing: it was already crowded enough that she wouldn't be able to spot him. 

She had planned her strategy so carefully tonight, down to the boots she had worn. A glossy new manicure, villainous red, gleamed on her fingers, and the coat she wore was her very best, and almost painfully tailored. She looked like a Bond villain, albeit a very stylish one. She did not want to look like she had tried so hard for _him_; she wanted it to be the persona she projected to him. At first she had planned on showing up late, but showing up early gave her a chance to enact part of her plan. Sansa went inside the Enterprise, eyes narrowed for Jon Snow. She wasn't nervous. Her hands were shaking, but it was a bodily reaction to a stressful situation. She was definitely _not_ nervous about seeing Jon Snow, about whether he would recognize her, about how he might look, or about how he might think she looked. 

Sansa scanned the room. The bar smelled like damp boots and umbrellas but it was cozy inside. Half of it looked like any other polished bar in central London, with its gleaming taps before a mirrored facade and plastic menus advertising "traditional" fare, and a bright oak bar with not nearly enough barstools crammed before it. The after-work crowd had gone leaving the ones without children to scurry home to, but the Enterprise never got that lurching, dangerous feel that so many other bars did at this time of night. There were framed pictures on the wall over an area with plush chairs and loveseats, and the wan Christmas carol switched to the Beatles, and someone had lovingly strung broken twinkle lights all about the room. There were no seats, yet, but Jon Snow was clearly not here yet, either. 

It was just fine for her plan, but Jon Snow was clearly late. They had agreed on 8:15, and now it was almost 8:20. Sansa went to the bar and ordered two beers, a Doom Bar which was utterly plain and drinkable; the hardest thing for him to believably turn down if someone bought it for him. Men's gazes slid over her: the black leather pencil skirt peeking from the hem of her tailored black coat; the black boots that she had no problem walking in (she'd practiced); the hint of a silk blouse's collar from where she had begun to unbutton her coat. With a few well-placed smiles and looks at her watch, two men got up from one of the booths. 

"We were finished anyway, love," one said, holding up his long-empty pint glass demonstratively. "Lucky man tonight!" he added, nodding to her two full pints. Sansa smiled but said nothing and, unnerved, the two men fled the booth. 

She positioned herself to have a view of the door and set the pints down and shed her coat. She wanted to check to make sure her lipstain had not got on her teeth and that her silky blouse still looked pristine, but she resisted the urge and sat down in the booth with as much self-possession as she knew how to fake. She pretended to be on her mobile, but glanced up just in time to see him walk in, and suddenly the bar felt claustrophobic; she longed for fresh air and a glass of water. 

He was carrying a black motorbike helmet and shrugging off a jacket. Underneath, he had not even had the decency to wear a nice shirt: it was some sort of grey henley that looked marvelous on him, annoyingly so, but displayed zero effort. Compared to the hours she had spent agonizing over which skirt to wear, which color to paint her nails, she already felt like a fool—not that it mattered. Alayne Stone had not so carefully curated her appearance tonight to make Jon Snow happy; she had done it because she always did it. She slid the pint she'd gotten for Jon across the table as he reached her, and only looked up at the very last second. 

"You're late," she observed coolly, and pretended to be absorbed in her mobile. "I have another appointment at nine, so I'm afraid we'll have to be quick. I got you a beer." 

Would he drink it? She glanced up when he said nothing. Jon was sliding into the seat across from her, his helmet and jacket crowded next to him. His hair was wild and mussed from the helmet, and a shadow of stubble was forming along his jawline. The pink scar over his brow looked angry. 

"Heard you're out of the investigation," Jon said, taking the beer. Sansa watched, but only saw the briefest flash of hesitation before he took a swig. She'd have to find out what mood stabilizers he was on, and how big of a problem this was. 

"Unfortunately, yes. I don't have the bandwidth to give the case the attention it needs," she said with a nod, sipping her own beer. At this end of the pub it was darker, and planes of Jon were illuminated green and pink from the Christmas lights. "Who told you?" 

"Lannister," Jon said, settling back and feeling for his wallet. "What do I owe you?" 

"Nothing." Sansa waved his wallet away. "I've never sat down with a Met detective before; that alone is payment enough for my curiosity." 

Jon studied her as he put his wallet back in the back pocket of his black jeans. "Anyway, back to Lannister, I think he's in good hands if you're managing his case. You seem competent enough." 

Jon's lips twitched. 

"What high praise," he mused sardonically. "Then again, everyone seems to hate the Met these days, so I'm not going to hold out for popularity." He straightened again, and Sansa went in for the kill. 

"Why did you ask to meet me?" She folded her hands on the table, businesslike as ever, but when she crossed her legs beneath the table, her foot knocked his shin and they had to realign, to mumble apologies, and it ruined the crispness of the moment. Jon drew in a breath and looked head-on at her. 

"People hire private investigators in conjunction with the Met. It happens," he conceded, "but it's usually only when they have particular details that would be vital to the case but also damning for them. I looked into you and found nothing. Your real name is not Alayne Stone." 

Jon let the accusation hang in the air between them; _Octopus’ Garden_ was playing distantly, almost like they were underwater. Sansa fought the urge to swallow. He hadn't found her out; he couldn't have. 

"I see," Sansa said levelly. She spun her beer glass. "And to give this case the best shot, you might as well investigate every angle. Very well. I do have one detail that came to light recently, that I'm not sure Tyrion shared with you." 

Jon arched his brows, he leaned in closer. He took another swig of his beer, but it lacked the greedy gulping of an alcoholic. Perhaps he had not been told he could not drink on his medication; perhaps it didn't matter to him. 

"Go on," he said impatiently. "You said you have another appointment." 

"Tyrion was looking at Shae's Google Maps timeline," Sansa began. Jon took out a notebook from his jacket, and the briskness of the movements and the way he wrote _Alayne Stone, 8:25pm, Wednesday night, _and underlined it infuriated her for some reason. The same man who had gone on leave was being so bloody professional about this. "A few weeks back, he found she had gone to his father's walk-up. The one we visited." 

"Hm." Jon wrote the note in shorthand, then flipped the notebook closed. "It's hardly surprising," Sansa continued, just for something to say, some proof of her expertise. 

"You're right," Jon conceded, and he took another swig of his beer, then pushed it to the side. "That's not really what I was looking for, though. That sort of data would come out in the investigation quickly. I'm asking about you." 

"You don't have _data_ on me that would come out quickly?" 

Jon's half smirk was almost pretty; she couldn't decide if she wanted to slap it from him or kiss him. It was a new imbalance. She had not wanted a man in so many years that the feeling was alien and uncomfortable; like trying to manage too many spinning plates, her heart was pounding with the fear of them all shattering around her. Or perhaps it was like having a balloon inside of her, slowly swelling further and further, so that deep breaths were hard and just to sit comfortably was impossible. _This is normal, _she told herself. _You always thought he was lovely, and you never could resist a mystery. Get ahold of yourself. _

"Not if you use a fake name. I tracked your mobile, but it seems to stay at your office," Jon admitted. Sansa smiled. 

"I have to be careful, Detective Inspector," she admitted. "I look into a lot of important people who have even more resources than I do. I keep a low profile for a reason, and unless you've got a warrant, I will not be volunteering any information that I don't have to." 

Jon paused, staring thoughtfully at her. She watched him tap his fingers against the table in rapid thought, the nails short and clean, but the hands themselves were scarred. He must have been a beat cop at first, and worked his way up to Detective Inspector. 

"Look," he began, drawing out his own mobile from his pocket, "I'm just going to be upfront. I have my own photographers, and I hope this doesn't make you uncomfortable. They're all in public spaces," he said, and after zooming in on something he turned his mobile screen to her. She touched the mobile to tilt it closer and their fingers brushed; they both muttered, _sorry, _and adjusted their grips. 

And there she was, a few weeks ago in a cafe near her office. It had been taken through the windows; it was undeniably her. She even remembered the case she had been thinking of, that day, and what she'd ordered for lunch. A beet salad that had been a little limp; she had sat at a table near the window and watched the people walk by. It had been one of the harder days. 

"Caught red-handed," she said at last. "I don't see the point of this unless you wanted to inform me that I am being watched." 

Jon stowed his mobile away; he looked strangely exhilarated. 

"That was it," he admitted. "You are being watched. By me. I want to know why you dropped Tyrion Lannister's case. A PI hardly gets interesting cases, usually; I doubt you're so busy with divorcees and peeping toms that you haven't the time for a real mystery like where Shae Lorath went." 

His words hit a little too close to home. She smiled at him. 

"I suppose you find yourself quite powerful. You must need it, having been on leave. I imagine that bruises a tough man's ego." She sipped her beer, watching over the rim of the glass for some sign of injury, but Jon only mirrored her cunning smile, mimicking her almost exactly. 

"Miss Stone," he began in a low voice, "I suppose you find yourself quite powerful. You must need it, if you have to craft a false identity and dig up rumors on detectives at the Met. I'm flattered you looked into me." 

"Thank Tyrion Lannister," she countered coolly. "I didn't have to look far at all; he had already done it." She checked her watch. "Seems we're done early, which gives me time to get to my next appointment." 

"It seems we are," Jon said. "For now. Thanks for your time tonight. As long as I don't find anything interesting, we won't be seeing each other again." 

They left their unfinished pints on the table. Jon walked ahead, strapping on the helmet of his motorbike. Donning her own coat in the shelter of the pub, she watched him walk to the motorbike parked on the road, the rain soaking his coat. 

"Good luck with the case," she called after him, opening her umbrella. Jon paused and looked back at her. "And be careful in the rain on that thing. It's a death machine." 

Jon straddled the bike, and Sansa stepped out into the rain beneath the bloom of her umbrella. "One more thing," she began, hugging her coat to herself. In her periphery, she saw two girls, teenagers, scuttling in the darkness. "I've heard you shouldn't drink on mood stabilizers. Be careful." 

Jon started the bike, but he did not look away from her, so she smiled at him. "I'm just concerned," she added. "London needs its police." 

"Thanks," he said, at last. "One more thing for you, too. The black doesn't suit you. Looks fake." 

The engine ripped and roared, and Jon left her standing in the middle of the road beneath her umbrella, alone on Red Lion Road. The two girls in her periphery were squabbling; one of them, short-haired and wearing a baggy Oxford sweatshirt beneath her mac, was staring after Jon Snow's motorbike with a hunger that only a teenaged girl would know, a hunger that Sansa had once been haunted by. 

She touched her wig with a trembling hand, and turned around to walk past the Enterprise. She could still hear the Beatles, and they haunted her the rest of the way down the road. 

_She came in through the bathroom window..._


	4. Chapter Four

_Looking up from underneath_

_Fractured moonlight on the sea_

_Reflections still look the same to me_

_As before I went under_

** _Jon_ **

Alone in his bed that evening, staring at the bottle of Lamictal on his nightstand and watching the patterns of traffic shift across his ceiling throughout the night, Jon could no longer avoid that today had been a day of dangerous choices. He had been acting on wild impulses that had felt like hunches, like bursts of inspiration, in the moment. Yet examined from his sober bedroom, alone and exhausted, he could see that they had been moments of lunacy.

_What_ had possessed him to meet with Miss Stone? More importantly, what the hell had possessed him to take Shireen to Chelsea and Westminster? And what came next—should he come clean to Mormont, admit what he'd done? Or could he let it slip by; could he simply wait until enough time had passed and pray that no one mentioned it?

Nothing, he soothed himself, had happened. Nothing _could_ have happened: he had simply walked into Chelsea and Westminster and arranged to meet with a colleague of Lannister. Nothing had happened that would put Shireen in danger. And yet... He could not put into words exactly what he feared, but he knew he had done wrong.

Then, there was the matter of Miss Stone. A beautiful woman planed in blush and electric green in the lights of a bar, her long slender legs brushing his—it hardly mattered that Meera had taken pictures of her, for he had been unable to take his eyes from her. She was electric, she was something new, she was a burst of light in an otherwise muddled world. Who was she, and why did she hold her cards as close to her chest as he did? A few times throughout their conversation, Jon had forgotten his objective altogether, had felt himself sinking tantalizingly into her mystery, in free-fall as he had always feared was his greatest pull. It had only been a few fleeting instants, but they stood out to him all the same like stains on fabric, only noticeable if you knew they were there already.

He knew what he had done.

At the very least he had wisely ended the meeting early, before he could forget himself completely. He had shown her the photographs, had waited for hysteria and panic at the notion of being followed, but she had remained detached, a world away from him. He had not cornered her, but instead had chased her into the sky.

He was, above all, a hunter. He knew it. And she was giving chase—or at least his wild, stupid brain had told him so, in the Enterprise, with Abbey Road blaring and the golden taste of plain beer lingering in the back of his throat. He had felt powerful, he had felt like he had—at last, at last—had color injected into the grey world in which he had been living for so many months.

_You are no hunter, _he told himself when he awoke the next morning, after muddled dreams of copper hair flashing in sunlight in the woods of the Winterfell estate. _You are Detective Inspector Jon Snow, and you are seeking Shae Lorath. And that is the beginning—and the end—of it. _

He turned up at work early the next morning, grim-faced and properly dosed—the Lamictal wasn't the only thing that Dr. R'hllor had him on, but it was the only thing he had even pretended to take as indicated—to find Shireen lingering outside of the locked door of his office. She was clad in the same overlarge Oxford sweatshirt as yesterday, and shrouded in a coral-colored mac whose vibrance did not distract from her burns. There was a shaft of light under Stannis' door; her father was already here, and Shireen seemed diminished, by the mere suggestion of her father's presence. She visibly brightened, straightening up when she saw Jon.

_None_ of this was by the book, and her hanging about his office waiting for him was just asking for him to be caught by Mormont or Marsh.

Why had he taken her to Chelsea and Westminster? What fool thought had possessed him to do such a thing? His only excuse was that he loved her, _loved _her, and could not resist making her happy. He had sometimes fantasized about confronting her selfish, self-absorbed, helpless parents. _Your child is a gift that you do not understand, _he longed to say. _Your child is a gift that I will never receive. _Whatever haunted Stannis—Jon had no sympathy for it.

His only excuse was that when he looked at her, at her scuffed trainers and her backpack full of books in Ancient Greek and Latin, at her mottled flesh and her untouched flesh, at her newly-shorn hair and her anxious, gentle smile, his blood sang _daughter. _

"Shireen," he greeted wearily, unlocking his office door. "How'd the birthday celebrations go?"

The office still smelled musty from all the months in which he had been gone, but nevertheless Jon shut the door. Shireen sat on the edge of the desk as Jon unpacked his bag, swinging her legs and thumping her heels rhythmically, irritatingly, against the side of the desk. Her converse high-tops had drawings in gold pen along the cloth, little doodles and inside jokes. She was nineteen, she was a child—what the _hell _had possessed him to take a child along on a criminal investigation?

_But your mother was nineteen,_ whispered a tiny voice. _Was she a child too?_ Lyanna had died at nineteen when they found her dead in a motel room in a pool of her own vomit and blood, abandoned by the man who had led her astray, her teeth loose and her hair thin and her arms covered in little dark marks and bigger, florid green and purple bruises. Sansa Stark had been nineteen when they had dredged the River Nidd for her body. Shae Lorath was nineteen when she'd disappeared from her keeper's home after running from her pimp.

Jon looked at Shireen at last. Her eyes were puffy; one side was worse than the other, per the burns. She had been crying.

"Oh, you know," she said with a watery laugh. "Mum cried on the kitchen floor about the passage of time and dad left... Who knows where he went..." she swallowed. "By the way, you want a candle? It's from Anthropologie. Mum wouldn’t even look at it."

“You got a candle from school?" Jon teased as he settled his notebooks, and he heard Shireen scoff. It was a brighter sound.

"No, silly. Anthropologie’s a store—a _lovely_ store. I like going in there, it feels like a fairy forest where I'll find lovely things, things I'll never afford, like candles that cost thirty pounds and dresses for women who don't have burns on their face." Her tone was cheery, but it was clearly a bad day.

Jon knew how those went.

Sometimes, all of it—the crushing mess in which you lived—was fine. You could appreciate a glimpse of blue sky; the delayed bus seemed almost pastorally charming; the crabby barista just another colorful character in your quirky, brightly-colored, cinematic life. You could love people for their flaws, and you felt, for some fleeting moments, like the hero of your own story. But these days were so few and far between, and who could tell why they came, and whether they were the truth? It was the rest of the days, when everything smelled like mildewed coats and everything sounded like squeaky brakes and whinging children that you could barely bring yourself to look in the mirror, that you would wonder why anyone bothered with anything at all. Once upon a time those days had been rare for Jon. The army had given him stability—damaging though it had been—and being a beat cop had given him a sense of purpose, a sense of fighting for something greater than himself. These days it seemed that every day was him standing outside of a cafe, trying to see through rain-blurred glass, into a life that he was supposed to be living.

So he smiled at Shireen. It occurred to him to hug her, and on any other day he might've, and thought nothing of it—but there was something lurking, something sinister. Shireen was nineteen—why had he forgotten that his own mother had been nineteen? She had been no child—old enough to run off with a coke addict and wind up overdosed in a motel—nor had Sansa Stark, the jewel of Harrogate, the object of lust for so many men. Shireen was old enough to run off with a coke addict; Shireen was old enough to disappear with a man.

“You’ll have to show me,” he said, instead of a hug. Shireen rolled her eyes, but she looked happier.

“You’d absolutely _hate_ it,” she drawled. “But I’m not leaving until tomorrow. Back to Oxford, I mean. Maybe we can go today, after you’re done work. …Anyway, how was your meeting with the lady detective?" she asked, not looking at him, picking up one of his pens and fidgeting with it.

The office suddenly was far too small; he had not wanted to think of Miss Stone again. Was this how fathers felt when their daughters began to date? It was a hideous clash of worlds: the world in which he had, once upon a time, spun Shireen in his arms and felt her chubby arms cling to him like he was the only thing that mattered; and the world in which he had met Miss Stone in a bar and had, at fleeting moments, forgotten that it was for business and had wildly thought of pulling her into the loo of the Enterprise and kissing her neck, just her neck, and perhaps her wrists, too.

He did not want to allow Shireen into that world. She was a child. She was not ready for that world, not when she was still drawing doodles on her converse sneakers, still making felted-wool wolves for him, still naively buying her suicidal mum expensive birthday candles.

"It was good. She's very..."

Jon searched for the word, but all he could think of was the way she'd looked at him when he'd told her the black hair was too fake. She had not been hurt, or angry—she had been a deer caught in his headlights, an eerie shadow that belonged to a world that he foolishly thought he could control with guns and camouflage, a feral world of crushed leaves and strange noises and branches like bone in moonlight.

He rubbed at his scar. ”…Very professional," he said at last. “It was a short meeting. I doubt I'll see her again."

"Are you still seeing that surgeon at Chelsea and Westminster today?” Shireen asked eagerly.

And here it was. Jon set his notebook down on the desk.

"I am," he said carefully. He met Shireen's eyes; the light coming in slats from his blinds cast her scars in high relief. "You can't come, Shireen.“

"I figured," she said quietly. "Was she pretty?" she asked suddenly. “The detective, I mean.”

Back to this again. Jon studied Shireen, wondering if there were some boy she’d met at Oxford. Some skinny boy drinking black coffee and taking too much adderall; some boy making her feel lesser. If he were making Shireen feel sad, or less confident, in any way—any way at all—he would have Jon to answer to. She had fought too hard for whatever self-esteem she had; woe betide the stupid boy who tried to break that down. _Pretty. _From even her earliest days, Shireen had had an eye for pretty things. Pretty women; pretty dresses, flouncy and frothy. Pretty weather and pretty gardens.

"Yes, she was very pretty,” Jon said after some thought, though he’d known his answer at once. “And stylish. I told you already about that. And competent. But she's off the case; I won't be seeing her again."

"You sound sad," Shireen observed. She had fished the woolen wolf from his top drawer and was making it walk along his desk absently. "You could've been a power couple."

"Or power enemies," Jon pointed out. "Arch nemeses."

"Like Sherlock and the Woman—ooh, or better yet, Sherlock and Moriarty," Shireen had said with relish. "Who d'you think you're more like? You're unconventional, like Sherlock Holmes, but there's chaos about you, too, like Moriarty. You know, he was my first celebrity crush. Andrew Scott, I mean. He was the best part of the BBC series. I wanted to marry himwhen the episode first aired. He goes to the Tower of London and steals all of the Crown Jewels. I had a whole tumblr sideblog dedicated to him.”

Shireen was pulling something up on her mobile, and she showed it to Jon now.

He was not the pretty boy that Jon had expected, like a member of a boyband. Shireen had briefly been obsessed—scarily obsessed—with…what was it? One Direction? But this was no coiffed pretty boy with a golden tan and a thousand-pound tee shirt stretched across Vogue. This man had a wan face and dark eyes; he was either a villain in plain sight or a weary, well-worn hero. He was not handsome in the way that a little girl might notice. He was a _man,_ his appeal in what he could—what he might—do, in the danger that he might—or might not—represent.

_Nineteen. _

He could still remember when he’d had to take Shireen bra shopping, as her mother was in one of her darker periods and Stannis often pretended his child did not exist. Humiliating for them both, they had gone to some teenage store—Topshop, was it?—and he had begged Gilly to come along for help. Gilly, with her half-bleached hair and dark roots, her cheap parka with matted faux-fur trim, her Manchester accent, yesterday’s eyeliner beneath her eyes and today’s eyeliner caked on top. She had been, as Jon had expected, as gentle and caring as a mother could be, her gaze never once—not even _once_—lingering on Shireen’s burns. They had left the Topshop with Shireen giggly and nervous, clutching the shopping bag, and Gilly looking wistful and sad. Jon had bought them all lunch and had uncomfortably witnessed Gilly informing Shireen that she did not have to show her bra—or anything else—to anyone that asked to see it. _You’re becoming a woman now, _Gilly had said patiently. _They’ll want to see, but you don’t have to show anyone._

_Nineteen. A child. _

Somewhere outside his office, he could hear Mormont's typical booming voice, and he felt his mouth go dry.

"Shireen, you should go get a coffee," he said abruptly. "Mormont'll kill me for having you in here with all these case files exposed.”

Shireen slid dramatically off of his desk, rolling her eyes.

"It's not like I haven't seen what this work does to people. I've lived with it," she pointed out, jabbing a finger at her face. It had been said in the tone of a joke, but neither of them laughed. "Meet you at Chelsea and Westminster? Fulham Road?"

She was so hopeful.

_Like that nineteen year old?_ Ramsay Bolton had said, pale eyes lingering on Shireen’s coltish form as she knocked over the greeting card display.

"You can't, Shireen." It killed him to say it, it killed him to see her shoulders sink, to see her bite her lip. "It's too dangerous. There'll be too many questions. I'm on probation as it is."

"Right." She left with her head down and slammed his door shut.

The photos of Miss Stone were still in his bag, and Jon took them out once more, and laid them out on the table. They were not going to help him find Shae Lorath, but Shireen—and the case—was making him think, helplessly, of another nineteen year old girl who had gone missing; a nineteen year old girl who had grown accustomed to being the object of so many men's desire; a nineteen year old girl who had gotten far too close to far too many powerful men.

Last night in his dreams he had seen Sansa Stark once again, in a memory—or at least it seemed it; these days he couldn’t be sure anymore—so vivid that he could smell the decaying leaves, the smoke from the rifles, could hear Robb’s laughter mingling with Jaime Lannister’s. He had seen her copper hair flashing through the woods, heard her laughter, heard the powdery crack of Robb's hunting rifle go off, heard Jaime Lannister laughing at Robb's missed shot. He could see it clear as day: that day, he'd shot more than any of them, but for one horrifying moment, he'd thought he'd shot one of the girls. He'd heard whimpering, and had furiously crunched through the leaves. The sunlight had been blinding; his boots and coat had been all wrong for hunting and Jeyne had made fun of him for it. He'd come to a thicket where Sansa and her silly, silly friends Jeyne and Beth had been crouching with her. Myrcella Baratheon—Shireen's cousin, though they had only met once or twice—had been there, too, lovesick as most girls were over Robb and craning her neck constantly for a glimpse of him.

They had laughed like loons when he'd uncovered them.

"You shouldn't be here," he had seethed. "I thought I’d shot—“

“—You shot me. Shot through the heart, Jon Snow, and you’re to blame,” Jeyne—she was the meanest of them; Beth and Sansa rarely bared their teeth, especially Sansa—jested as she sang, clutching at a small breast. She was skinny, too skinny, and he’d heard talk that she’d been hospitalized for it. Something about a man at a party, something about a man who had pinched her hips and called her fat. Even when Jayne was cruel as she was to Arya, it was hard to drum up much anger at her cruelty when he thought of what it might feel like to be trapped in a room with a man, naked, as he pinched at what you believed were your worst flaws. "Come claim your prize," she'd added dramatically, falling back into the thicket as though felled like one of his geese, and Beth had offered a weak laugh; Myrcella and Sansa had wisely not laughed, sensing Jon’s disgusted impatience.

Sansa was the responsible one of them; Jon had looked to her for help.

"Get them out of here," he'd ordered. "It's not safe."

Sansa's gaze had been cool, measuring, indifferent to him as always. Her cashmere sweater, stylishly too large, had been slipping off her shoulder, revealing a frothy mint-green bra strap.

"Safe? Robb aims at the sky, and you never miss. I'm not scared," she'd replied carelessly, with a shake of her magnificent head, copper hair catching the light. At this, the others had begun to giggle, and Jon had felt a headache coming on.

"You know _he_ doesn't, either," Beth had said suddenly to Sansa. “Miss a shot, I mean. I saw _him _at the Baratheon's; he never misses. He's as good as Jon is."

Sansa had flushed with pleasure, and Jon had swung from them with irrational force, tramping through the fallen leaves, snapping twigs and crunching leaves noisily, as he made his way back to the others. _Who _was as good as he was? Jaime Lannister himself had said that Jon was the best shot he'd ever seen; who could it have been that the Baratheons might know? Joffrey?

Jon studied Meera’s photographs, brought back to the present. What sort of woman, careless and heartbreakingly lovely, would Sansa Stark have grown into? She’d been intelligent, though they’d all dismissed it, for her loveliness had been overwhelming and Jon had often found it stifling. Her bikinis, her little designer dresses, her thick hair spilling over her shoulders, bending so prettily to whatever might obstruct it. He’d had to leave the room so often; he’d found relief in the army, for he had never dared—not once—to—

No, that wasn’t right. Jon stuffed the photographs away with a panicked, clammy hand. He was misremembering things. It was Dr. R’hllor’s fault; it was the Lamictal’s fault; it was the fault of what had happened with Shireen. He’d spent years researching false memories, years interviewing suspects and witnesses who had spent too much time in talk therapy. Truth was boring, truth was plain—deep in our brains lay the secret to a reality more dreamlike, a reality in which bad accidents and pointless tragedies were gilded with purpose, a conceptual reality that gave some fucking semblance of meaning to the catastrophe that was life. The brain was suggestible, the brain was wildly beyond our control, laying in wait for an unclaimed moment to twist and to shape to something that fit with everything else it had sculpted. The brain, the subconscious, was the enemy of truth. Our souls willed it so.

**Jon** [9:12:07] Hi, Meera. I looked into your photographs.

**Jon** [9:12:58] I see no evidence of any connection to Sansa Stark. I’m sorry. If you come upon any new photographs, or any new evidence comes to light, we can stay in touch.

He set his mobile aside and did some work, all the while all too aware of his mobile and how it did not buzz.

At last, an eternity later, it buzzed—once.

**Meera** [9:47:10] the evidence is that there is no evidence. We know nothing. Maybe once you get your fucked up sex thing figured out, you’ll be able to look into it for real.

** _Sansa_ **

Today’s venture was simply an addition to her routine of keeping tabs on her siblings, she told herself. It had not been arduous to put on the frizzy blonde wig and the pink toggle coat and the lime green Doc Martens; she had at once become an entirely different sort of woman, the sort who had worked in quirky cafes and didn't own a flatiron and perhaps still had a penchant for Hello Kitty and had spent her adolescence scurrying romantic fantasies of Spock and Kirk in the margins of her school notebooks. She had lingered outside of New Scotland Yard, for Brienne was tailing Bat Dad and there was no other important work to be done today, as she had already returned Tyrion's bounced cheque.

So she had waited on Victoria Embankment, had decided her name was Gwynnie and that she had a corgi named Elvis, and had found Jon Snow's motorbike parked almost immediately. He’d have to come out at some point; there was too much boots-on-the-ground work to be done on the Shae Lorath case. All she had to do was wait.

And she was not alone: the girl with the Oxford sweatshirt and mac from the night before had been lingering about the Embankment too, and it was not so hard to guess whom she sought. Her eyes were puffy and red; she must have been crying. _Bad home life? _Sansa could not help but wonder. Her Oxford sweatshirt and scruffy trainers spoke of a privileged but avoided child.

It was about ten fifteen when Jon Snow came out at last, his hair pulled back and the ghost of stubble lining his jaw. He was wearing all black: black jeans, black boots, black sweater, black coat. There were bruise-like shadows beneath his eyes, and he looked like he'd not had a square meal in months. His grief only made him lovelier; the girl who lurked behind him with a half-ruined face seemed to find him the loveliest thing she had ever seen.

It was the doodles on the trainers that did her in; Sansa had only been half-toying with following Jon Snow to wherever he was going, but now she had to, for the sake of this young woman who so desperately hungered for Jon Snow. She followed him to the underground, taking false calls on her mobile and watching the pixie-cut haired skinny little thing follow him. She was good; even with her brightly-colored coat, she knew how to tail a man, and Sansa wondered just how much practice the girl had had in tailing men—in tailing Jon Snow.

Jon boarded the train; Sansa boarded the train too. They stood near each other. Sansa was wearing fuchsia knock-offs of ridiculous Prada sunglasses that clashed horribly with her pink coat, and for her studied eccentricity she was invisible to Jon. He wanted to find those that did not want to be found; he would not have any time or breath for Gwynnie and her eccentricities. They swayed and rocked on the Tube, and, just beyond her line of sight, she knew that girl—with the pixie cut and Oxford sweatshirt and the pure hunger—lingered, mac hood up and sneaking glances where she could. She couldn't have been twenty—to imagine her in university, even, was a stretch.

Had Sansa ever looked so young, so young that her beauty was not a commodity and she had been allowed to be a child, all but genderless in the eyes of the men around her? She could remember watchful gazes from as young as twelve; her first bikini, her first expensive jeans, her first high heels which had been low and glittery and the result of a reluctant, despairing compromise between her own longing to be glamorous and her mother’s longing to keep her daughter young and safe forever.

_Mum… _She studied the young girl in the mac. She understood it now, the reluctance that she had found so _infuriating_ as a teenager. A lump was rising in her throat.

The first feeling other than fear that she had felt in a long time was welling up. Mental problems aside, Jon Snow was—she knew it, though her nineteen-year-old self could not have said it—a very good, very kind man, moodiness and apparent mental troubles (according to Tyrion and Petyr) aside. If this child had to pick one older man to follow inappropriately, she had done well. She could no more imagine the Jon Snow she had known using this girl’s adoration for his own ends than she could have imagined her father doing such a thing.

But nothing good, nothing truly happy, could ever come from following a man twice your age, no matter how good he was. He'd been a little younger than Robb but a little older than her; he'd be thirty-seven or thirty-eight now, which had to be twice this girl’s age if not more. There was, no matter what this child believed, no fairy tale romance to be conjured up here.

Jon Snow was scrolling through what were clearly emails on his mobile with one angular, scarred hand holding the mobile, and Sansa watched him all the while.

No different, she told herself as she watched him hungrily, hungry as a nineteen year old girl, from keeping tabs on her siblings.

He looked up; she immediately looked down at her mobile, and scrolled through her ghost Instagram account, which she had created purely for following Rickon and Gendry. Gendry's instagram sometimes showed pictures of Arya, which was the only reason she followed an account otherwise dedicated to ridiculous posts about his progress with kettle bells. Most recently he had shared a blurry post of her in an orange knit beanie, curled in a shopping cart, shrieking with glee as he—or perhaps one of their many, many friends—drunkenly pushed her through some abandoned lot. At the end of the video, whoever was pushing the cart had let go. Arya, silhouetted by parking lot lights, had gotten up from her crouch and spread her arms in a wide V as she rode the cart with a metallic, unsteady jangle of wheels against tarmac.

She scrolled further. Rickon's overexposed face, with its fresh, angry tattoo, popped up, and Sansa angled her shoulder so that Jon Snow could not possibly spot her.

**Yo matez come to soHOOO this friday... ill be droppin some beatz and gettin real... more realer than ever b4... **

At least it wasn’t a video; he often adopted a strange and ill-conceived version of what she guessed was intended to be a Jamaican accent in his videos. He was posing, absurdly, in front of a well-known club in Soho, wearing a fluorescent green jumper covered in ridiculous patches, and jeans so tight that his skinny legs looked like pins. It had thousands of likes already; Rickon had gained some attention via Instagram for his videos of his painful, talentless raps that all too clearly displayed the pristine flat that his inheritance, so carefully managed by Petyr, had bought him.

Rickon had been a baby when she had died; she had watched, through social media and word of (Petyr's) mouth, as Rickon had grown from a quiet boy at Eton to whatever this was, this crafted image of someone who had 'been through some shit,' as his raps so often described. It was not technically a lie and Sansa understood his need to express the tragedy through his own lens; his view was so hastily dismissed by the others because he had not truly lived through it, only its dismal aftermath.

Still, like any older sister would have been, she was outraged that_ this_ was how he was using his privilege, that _this_ was how he was choosing to express his grief, and in Rickon's Instagram account she had been given a gift: Arya reliably had something loud and brutally honest to say in her comments.

**wolfgirl89** oh my god Rickon you are NOT doing this

**wolfgirl89** its like if post malone and eminem had a baby and that baby had a lobotomy

**wolfgirl89** it’d be one thing if you were actually good at this AT ALL and then MAYBE I could look past your insulting and selfish cultural appropriation

**wolfgirl89** and ‘more realer’????!!!!! you went to ETON you idiot

**wolfgirl89** also WHAT IS that jumper?!

She stifled a laugh, then sobered. It seemed she would be paying a visit to a certain club in Soho this Friday.

And then her mobile pinged with a new email.

**From: ** [ **tywin.lannister@nhs.chelsea.org.uk** ](mailto:tywin.lannister@nhs.chelsea.org.uk)

**Subject: Follow-up**

_Dear Miss Stone, _

_Mr. Lannister found it a pleasure to meet you the other day and would like to continue the conversation, over supper, at Celeste in Belgravia this Friday at 8pm. He will send his driver to pick you up. _

_Please reply with your confirmation as soon as possible, as well as an appropriate address. It appears you are currently in St. John’s Wood; is this accurate? _

_Warm regards, _

_Lancel Lannister_

_Secretary, Tywin Lannister, MD _

She should have known. She had felt Tywin’s gaze lingering a beat too long more than once. She might have laughed at the presumptuousness of the email, but one line in particular made her breath catch in her throat.

_It appears you are currently in St. John’s Wood; is this accurate? _

Sansa went to her contacts. She had always kept one contact in particular, but she had never had cause to use it—not yet.

Now seemed a good time. No one—no one—was supposed to know her address. 

She opened a new text message.

**Sansa** [10:19:20] Hi Jaime, it’s Alayne. Your father wants to have dinner with me on Friday.

She watched the three dots pop up and flicker. Jaime’s reply was almost immediate.

**Jaime** [10:20:05] meet me at claridge’s tonight. 9pm.

** _Jon_ **

**Arya** [10:19:27] jon.

**Arya** [10:19:35] JON.

**Arya** [10:19:55] ARE YOU THERE

The Tube swayed; Jon had been googling Ramsay Bolton while he traveled to Chelsea and Westminster. Had he been on a different set of medications, he might have still been cringing at how Shireen had left his office, but as it was, he had taken one of the little round orange pills that Dr. R’hllor had advised him to take in times of emotional disturbance, lest he make poor decisions. He had never taken them before, as it was impossible for him to define an emotional disturbance these days given how out of himself and different he felt, but the idea of making another unhealthy choice had prompted him to go into the men's room at work and, at last, open the pill bottle that he had been advised to keep on his person at all times.

He'd stood there in the fluorescent lighting, staring at the lone pill he had shaken out of the bottle and onto his scarred palm. His head was throbbing and he'd been grinding his teeth all day; he did not want to take these pills anymore.

He would do _anything_ to keep Shireen safe from his poor choices. Who knew what else he might decide was a good idea today? He'd tipped the pill back and washed it down with water from the sink. Easiest choice he'd ever made.

Now he felt curiously sleepy and detached, and even Arya's frantic texts could not disturb him. He hoped some of this would wear off soon; it was hard to recall what the emotional disturbance had been in the first place and he felt stupid and thick.

**Jon **[10:21:28] Yes, I'm here. What's up?

**Arya** [10:21:54] are you coming this friday?

Friday was an odd, distant concept. Jon looked around the Tube, felt he was drifting through an alien world. _Coffee,_ he thought vaguely, rubbing at his mouth. He also decided that he was never taking those stupid orange pills ever again. He knew better, at least, than to ask Arya what was happening on Friday. He just needed a minute to remember what had sparked such rage within his younger cousin. The Tube lurched and he realized: _oh, right._ _Rickon_. Soho. Rapping about the tragedy. The Tube lurched again and, briefly, Jon’s gaze slid to a woman with curly blonde hair and a bubblegum pink coat. The curve of her mouth made him think of flashes of copper hair in dappled woods, of a bare neck set a glow by the warm light of a party, with a simple Cartier necklace gracing it. He wiped at his face again. No orange pill ever again; he was thinking of Sansa Stark _far_ too much these days.

**Jon** [10:22:47] Yes, I'll be there.

He almost missed his stop because he had realized, like a shape forming in the mist, that Rickon was only nineteen, too. A child, a child with rights and weapons that they could not possibly understand yet.

He still had some time once he’d made it to Fulham Road, so he stopped at a Caffe Nero a block from the hospital and got an espresso, hoping desperately that it would clear some of the fug surrounding him, humid and dangerous as it was. He could not conduct an investigation like this. But after tossing the small empty paper cup and making his way briskly to Chelsea and Westminster, Jon had the sense of a gas pedal he had depressed too hard; he was now going too fast through the mist, directionless and unbridled.

What the fuck had he allowed Melisandre R’hllor to do to him?

_Pull it together,_ he told himself. He had the whole of the procedure to get his head on straight. He didn’t have to understand the surgery; he just had to look watchful, appeal to Bolton’s ego enough that Bolton would divulge details about Lannister—if he actually had any—over what would surely prove to be a pretentious, bourgeois lunch.

In the main lobby, the same woman—Camilla, he recalled after a moment, the name thick on his tongue—was waiting at the front desk.

"Hi, I'm here to observe a procedure with Mr. Ramsay Bolton," Jon told her. Camilla wrinkled her nose.

"Are you credentialed?" She pointed to a kiosk. "I hope you're in the system and you've had all your vac--"

“—I’m police," Jon interrupted, flashing his badge. He was not entirely sure it could work, but his headache was coming in full force now, and as the mist lifted, the headache was sharpening. Camilla swallowed at the sight of _Metropolitan Police._

“You’re lucky. Mr Lannister hates the Met; _he_ wouldn’t let you in,” Camilla said, as though Jon should have found this to be some great insult. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, and followed her directions to the Trauma Centre, passing along the length of Chelsea and Westminster. Ramsay Bolton was already waiting for him by the bank of lifts, dressed in navy scrubs and a white coat. He clapped his hands together when he saw Jon.

“Detective! You made it! I’m terribly excited—this is going to be a good one,” Ramsay confided, placing an unwelcome hand on Jon’s back and guiding him. “Through this door. You’ll need to change into scrubs. Ever worn scrubs before?”

Jon had, in fact. Just once. In hospital he had held Shireen’s tiny hand as they had done the best they could, in the Burn Centre down at Lewisham, for the burns she’d got that night. _She’ll be in some pain_, they’d said quietly, eyeing his Met Police uniform and the absence of any parents. _She might like a hand to hold. _And so he’d sat there in the operating theatre, a mask over his face, holding that small, shaking hand and thinking he would murder anyone who harmed her ever again. Sometimes Stannis, whom he otherwise respected, treaded dangerously close to that line.

Not that he’d tell Ramsay Bolton any of this. They swung past the operating theatre schedule and entered a locker room.

“Haven’t,” Jon lied, stepping out of reach of Ramsay’s guiding hand. Ramsay grinned, looking him over.

“Well, you’re probably a medium. You’re not a broad man, are you? I’m the same. But you’re more fit than I am—” his pale gaze grazed Jon’s midsection as Jon shrugged off his peacoat, “—so there’s that, I suppose.” He handed Jon a navy shirt and trousers, the fabric worn and soft. “Go ahead and pop those on; you’ll need a cap and mask, too, and shoe covers, but we’ll get those outside.”

Jon waited for Bolton to turn away from him; they were the only men in the locker room. But Bolton leaned against the lockers and checked his mobile, still facing Jon. Uncomfortably, Jon shrugged out of his clothes and changed into the scrubs. The thick, slow feeling from the orange pill was subsiding but he was still clumsy, and the espresso, which made his heart race and his hands clammy, wasn’t helping matters either.

Out in the hall, Ramsay eagerly helped him tuck his hair into a pale blue scrub cap and tie a mask over his face.

“What a treat this is,” he said gleefully, leading him down the hall. No one, Jon noticed, looked happy to see Bolton. They all shot him wary looks, especially the nurses. “I tend to take a retrograde approach. It’s just easier. Less messy, takes less pins and less targeting, but the break is so far up; I need better fixation on the proximal fractures this time. The bullet was further up.”

Jon watched Ramsay scrub his hands and wrists, getting under the carefully-shaped nails. “You’re lucky it’s not a spinal,” Ramsay remarked as he turned to Jon, tying his own mask. “Spinals always make me crazy hungry for Korean barbecue. And you just don’t look like you’d be into that.”

Jon gave his fake smile, then realized it was covered by his mask.

“Korean barbecue?” he probed.

Ramsay backed into the door, jerking his chin for Jon to follow him.

“Bones and flesh, detective. The cooking smell always makes me think of burned rubber, makes me want to smell proper cooking. But there’s less heat here; I’ll only be bovie-ing a little bit.” He paused, the door half-open. A theatre matron was visible in the crack, looking impatient. “You don’t get sick at the sight of blood, do you? I ought to have asked.”

Jon saw his uncle’s brain matter smeared across concrete each night in his dreams, saw blood bubble from his once-beloved’s lips daily.

“Not at all,” he promised, and he followed Ramsay into the operating theatre.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Sansa makes a decision and confronts Jon, Jaime enters the fray, things get ugly with Meera.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was over 14k words so I ended up hacking it into two. 
> 
> Also, warning: the first incision of a surgery is described in the beginning of this chapter.

_And we climbed onto the roof of the museum_   
_And someone made love in the grass_   
_And I forgot my name_   
_And the way back to my mother's house_

**Jon**

"Alright, everyone!" The _smack_ of Ramsay's clapped hands echoed in the operating theatre, as three theatre nurses stared blandly at Ramsay. Jon felt a reluctant burst of empathy for the unpopular man, and fixed on the rest of the theatre to get away from the feeling. A lump of blue drapes waited at the center of the room, one leg revealed and poised. _The patient, _he realized with a lurch. Somewhere beneath that blue bundle was a person whose life had been irrevocably changed, whose wellbeing was dependent on this unlikable man's skill. _You have to hand it to him, _he thought uncomfortably. _Likable or not, it almost doesn't matter._ "Are we ready for time-out?"

"Yes, Mr. Bolton," a tiny theatre nurse, bundled in a sterile gown and cap like a sherpa, said from behind a table of glittering instruments, and—notably—a large black drill.

"We have a special guest here today," Ramsay told the room, gesturing back to Jon. "Everyone, say hello to Detective Inspector Jon Snow. He's with the Met. I've invited him to watch us put this young man's leg back together."

The silence was chilling. Jon was accustomed to dislike, as the Met was not always popular, but it had never felt so pointed. Even with the mask on, he could tell Ramsay was grinning. "Now, let's begin. We have a twenty-year-old male, with a gunshot wound causing a fracture of the right proximal femur. And what approach are we taking today, Dalla?"

"Antegrade, Mr. Bolton," the nurse said.

"And why is that, Dalla?" Ramsay allowed another nurse to tie off his gown, and he did a fanciful little spin. "Why not a nice, easy retrograde approach?"

"The bullet was too high, Mr. Bolton." She paused, and looked to Jon. "The Met officer shot him too high up."

Ramsay rolled his shoulders, stretched his arms, cracked his neck. The movements seemed more primal here, in this room where lacy arteries were danced around with biological precision.

"Precisely. And what do we expect the outcome of this procedure to be?"

"It will repair the fracture, but he'll need pain medication for the rest of his life. No more running about for him," said another nurse grimly.

Jon would not give them the satisfaction of looking uncomfortable—he knew no details of this case, knew nothing of why the officer in question had shot the man. He had been a beat cop for long enough to know that things got messy fast—hell, they still got messy, and he spent most of his time in an office these days. Still, as the C-arm was positioned and the shattered bone flickered on the screen, he felt a clench of sadness. There was nothing to be done about it, but he still struggled to pull his mind from the thought of a twenty-year-old man never running again.

"First incision," Ramsay declared, taking a scalpel from the little nurse. Strong, blunt fingers stretched the skin and, with deft and effortless precision, sliced into the skin at the hip.

The mood of the room shifted: the uneasy cheer had settled, and now Ramsay was all focus, barely speaking as he worked quickly and single-mindedly. "Nice," he muttered, taking further images and studying them with a critical eye. "Bone hook, please."

The nurse handed Ramsay the hook, and he looked back over his shoulder at Jon. Blood had dotted his gown from the first incision, and his pale gloves were smeared with it. "Why don't you come closer, Detective Inspector? You've got no view there. Dalla, move your table so the detective can watch."

"There's nowhere else for me to—"

"Dalla."

Ramsay dropped the bone hook, and it clattered to the floor. "Now look what you made me do. Go fetch me another one."

Dalla, the nurse, shot Jon a look of pure loathing before nodding to another nurse, who left the room at once. The room was tense, only the steady beep of anesthesia, as Jon squeezed to the edge of the sterile field. Up close, he could smell the blood. "Get me a face shield while you're at it. And get one for the detective, too," Ramsay added, studying Jon. He took the face shield from the nurse, and then the new bone hook. "Now, watch as I bring the ends of the fracture back together. Like fitting a shoddy, broken puzzle together."

With alarming candor, Ramsay shoved the bone hook into the incision and then pulled sharply. "I can't drill with this one, so I'll need extra force when I put the nail in." He looked back at Jon. "Getting sick yet?"

The harsh lights glinted off Ramsay's face shield, but Jon met those chilling blue eyes all the same. The fog from earlier had cleared: he was all here, now, and there was something—something—about Ramsay Bolton. He had forgotten how it felt, to be on the hunt, and though he had no evidence that Ramsay Bolton was anything more than an unlikable surgeon, he felt it once again. His old instincts, those sudden gut feelings that had propelled him higher and faster in the Met than his colleagues, were back. 

He adjusted his own mask, and let Ramsay watch him study the incision. Blood oozed down the leg, mixing with the brown betadine into a nauseating rust that dribbled onto the floor.

He'd seen worse—a lot worse. He looked back at Ramsay with a level stare that Ramsay matched. Those eerie vague blue eyes were, quite suddenly, piercing.

"Not yet."

Ramsay did not flinch.

"Shot," he ordered, still gazing at Jon. At last, he looked back at the screen of the C-arm. "Look at that, Detective," he breathed in wonder. "Sometimes the pieces _do_ fit together."

He tilted the fracture, and ordered another shot. Where from the ventral view, the fracture had seemed reduced, from this view it was still hopelessly fragmented. "Ah, fuck, still comminuted," he muttered. "And then sometimes the pieces don't fit together at all."

**Sansa**

Sansa had been lingering for hours, watching Oxford girl. She had learned that her name was Shireen Baratheon, that she was nineteen and loved art history memes and Andrew Scott, and that her father was Stannis Baratheon. Sansa ought to have recognized the blue eyes: Shireen's eyes were just like her Uncle Renly's eyes, and in her old life, Sansa had known of Renly.

Stannis' branch of the Baratheon tree had always seemed withered and leafless compared to those of Robert and Renly. There had been some tragedy in his past, and then—not so long after Sansa had 'died'—his daughter's flesh had been mutilated in a fire. It had been a mess within the Met, one heavily covered by the press. Sitting in a Caffe Nero on Fulham Road, hunched over her mobile and watching Shireen sit at the other end of the cafe and scroll through Tumblr, Sansa had found the archived article and her stomach had clenched. A grainy, black-and-white image of a much younger Jon Snow had popped up on her screen and she'd almost dropped the mobile. He was clean-shaven and short-haired, wearing a beat cop's uniform and scowling into the camera. Evidently he had been one of the responders to Stannis' home, though the article gave little further detail. That, likely, was where Shireen had met Jon and it wasn't so hard to fit these broken pieces together: a handsome savior, with a strong moral compass and an ability to see beyond her ruined flesh? Of course Shireen would have fallen in love. 

Sansa tried not to think about her own ruined flesh. What would she give to be able to show that to a man, to have him see beyond that badge of humiliation and ruin? 

Shireen got up, after hours of whiling away the time on Tumblr and Twitter, and Sansa had to scramble after her, down Fulham Road, at just the right distance, and then had had to tuck herself in a florist and linger, awkwardly, as Shireen lingered across the street from Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

So Jon was at Chelsea and Westminster—was he meeting with Tywin?

Yet when Jon Snow at last did emerge from the decorated doors of the hospital, it was not Tywin Lannister he walked with at all.

She dropped a succulent, and the terra cotta pot shattered, pieces clattering along the checkered floor, but she made no move to pick it up, or apologize.

It had been more than ten years, but she would know that face anywhere. She still saw it in her nightmares.

Jon Snow was walking down Fulham road with Ramsay Bolton.

The two men were walking swiftly, in deep conversation. Ramsay was gesturing wildly, and Jon forced out a laugh at something as they passed the florist. Shireen scurried after them, a block behind the two men, her hood up.

It all came roaring back: that night, her back on fire, the car, her mother's scream—headlights, strong hands pulling her, Brienne shouting we've got to go now, no goodbyes, not even one last look—

"—Ma'am?"

The shopkeeper, a young woman with highly cool and somewhat annoying orange Perspex glasses, was waving a hand in front of Sansa's face. Reality was a slap: here she was again in the shop, cars and buses roaring past the open door, a shattered potted plant scattered before her, and the space where Ramsay had occupied: just as rushing and roaring.

"O-oh god, I'm so sorry," she stammered, her face flushing. "I'll pay for that, of course."

After she had paid and tried to offer help in cleaning up, Sansa shakily walked out onto the sidewalk again. Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton had already disappeared around the bend, as had Shireen.

She had known it was possible; it was, in fact, why she had chosen to drop the case. And yet seeing was different than knowing. In any other circumstance, Sansa might have followed them, but today she could only walk along the sidewalk numbly, hands shaking and heart pounding, eyes wet, scars tingling and itching beneath her ridiculous coat.

He looked different from how he had all those years ago. More styled, more polished; handsomer, too. Men often had twice the charm in their thirties as they had at the onset of twenty, and Ramsay Bolton was no exception. Where before his face had been just a little too round and fleshy, it had become stronger, more angular. He had looked elegant, expensive. He had looked like a tempting bachelor.

Thinking had always been her strong suit, but her legs were moving of their own accord: she was sprinting down Fulham Road now, eyes streaming, knocking into schoolchildren and nannies and early commuters, swerving around little trucks rumbling in alleys and ducking clumsily around impatient cabs rounding bends. Soon enough they came into view again: Jon and Ramsay paused before Kurobuta, Ramsay still talking animatedly, and Shireen skittered onto Redcliffe, her hood still up. Yet as Ramsay swung open the door for Jon, those reptilian eyes skated over his surroundings, and as though in slow motion, Sansa saw his gaze rest, so briefly, on the clumsy young woman in the Oxford sweatshirt. Jon was ducking into Kurobuta, and the corner of Ramsay's mouth lifted in something like a smirk before he adjusted his fine cashmere coat and turned to duck in after Jon. 

She felt the reverberations long after the door had swung shut, the glass briefly flickering opaque in the grey daylight, long after Jon and Ramsay had disappeared. Shaking and weak, she leaned against a wall, ignoring the odd looks from passerby. 

He had _recognized_ Shireen Baratheon. He had_ known_ her. And the curve of his lips had been predatory and triumphant, and foolish little Shireen Baratheon had not even noticed. 

She couldn't. She knew better. She _could not_ get involved. Would Ramsay be so foolish as to try and prey upon the daughter of a lauded member of New Scotland Yard? Would Ramsay be so foolish as to try and prey upon this child that Jon Snow knew, that Jon Snow loved? 

Of course he would—in fact, there was nothing more tempting to him. 

And if Ramsay was a suspect—why else would Jon spend his time with him so informally like this?—then there was little doubt that he was, in fact, somehow connected to the disappearance of Shae Lorath. 

She couldn't get involved. 

She had to. 

Sansa wandered in and out of shops in a daze. She ignored Brienne's texts about Bat Dad. She stepped into the King's Arms and did something she never did: she ordered two shots of whiskey in the middle of the afternoon and sat at a table in the corner, staring at the panels of light across the empty bar. The two shots turned amber in the light, and she set her mobile on the table before them and stared ahead. 

She had to. 

She couldn't. 

For so many years, her life had been so desolate. She had not been with a man—she had not fallen in love—out of fear of what he might think of what Ramsay had done to her back, out of a choking, suffocating fear of what he might think of her wasteland of a life, no friends or family and a career that so many would consider sordid and lesser. She had lost her family, her home, her life, and now lived a life drenched in guilt and shame, watching the people she had loved from afar, a lonely voyeur into their lives. She had had everything that mattered to her stripped from her by the man that she had just watched smirk at Shireen.

How many other lives had he destroyed? How many other lives would he destroy? 

As many as she allowed him to destroy. 

The mobile's screen lit up with more texts that she dismissed. 

She had to do it. 

She downed the first shot, and coughed and choked, then downed the second. 

"Starting early," the bartender had laughed as he'd handed her the shots. She slammed the second shot glass down and fell against the oak-paneled booth, her throat raw and burning and her belly on fire. With nothing else to do, the bartender came back now to collect her empty glasses. "Are we celebrating, or mourning?" he asked, picking them up with a clack of glass on glass and setting them on a tray. 

Sansa considered her words. Her tongue felt thick, but the urge to cry had passed. She could have ridden a chariot, she could have tamed lions. She was about to throw it all away but at the same time she sensed that it was this moment that she had been awaiting, for so many years: she had remained tight in a bud and was now blooming, a bloom that would be short-lived and all the more miraculous for how long she had been waiting for it. 

"Both," she said at last, watching a brief wash of sunlight paint the bar gold. "It's a birth and a funeral." 

The barman threw back his head and laughed as he walked away. 

"That's quite metal of you," he teased over his shoulder. 

She picked up her mobile, and opened her email. 

_ **Dear Mr. Lannister, ** _

_ **I'm back in. I'll do it for free. ** _

**Jon**

"I do love the Tower of London," Ramsay confessed, as they entered the shadow of that terrible archway. The Tower of London was packed with tourists, as always, and Christmas carols were blaring from a pop-up ice rink that had been set up next to the old crumbling tourist trap. The daylight was fading, and they were elbowed and jostled by tourists, children with candy-smeared faces who bellowed and ran ahead of their parents, hassled couples tersely trying to enjoy themselves, elated Americans in polar fleeces who kept checking maps and stopping, infuriatingly, for selfies. 

Jon's stomach was still squirming from watching Ramsay Bolton eat sashimi as pink and glistening as the flesh he'd sliced through not an hour earlier. They had been dancing around the real brunt of things all afternoon, and Jon knew Ramsay had been aware of it. Sometimes subjects were oblivious, hooking on the new and unusual laserlike focus on them and expounding happily on everything from favorite supermarkets to what they thought of their neighbors' daughter's love life; Ramsay, Jon suspected, was never unaware of anything. His pale eyes danced with a sly gleam, his laugh was a slippery sound that briefly flashed on things unspoken like a swinging flashlight. So he had tread carefully, never prodding or pushing hard at all. 

But he'd waited long enough. They went inside the tower, pushed along by the people behind them and nearly stepping on the heels of the people in front of them. 

"It's an interesting passion, for a surgeon, I mean," Jon hedged. The echoing laughter and chatter was at odds with the grim space before them. They passed by an iron maiden and Jon thought of the smell of cauterizing flesh. 

"It's a bit creepy, isn't it?" Ramsay agreed with that same strange laugh. "You came to learn more about Tywin Lannister and found a new snake in the grass." 

"I wasn't going to say it, but...yes." 

Neither of them, he suspected, was paying much attention to their surroundings. They breezed along the tour, pausing on a breezeway to look at a sign depicting a man stabbed all over with swords. 

"Ha. 'Always use protective clothing—in emergency, call surgeon,'" Ramsay read off. They walked on. "Lucky for you, I'm here. Then again, given what we were just talking about, perhaps not!" 

Their elbows brushed as they walked in silence for a moment. It was nearing dark now, and the air was blurring with fog. 

"I am lucky," Jon said carefully. "Not many people are willing to divulge uncomfortable truths about powerful men. But you volunteered—though I'm beginning to wonder if you've really got anything for me, or if you just liked the attention."

Ramsay seemed to be drawn to the provocative; Jon could match him any day.

"On Lannister?" 

They had come outside again, and passed a long line to see the crown jewels. "Look, I admit my interest in the human form can seem a bit macabre," Ramsay reasoned, as they walked toward the entrance. They could hear the shouts from the ice rink from here. "It's been a love of mine all of my life. There's nothing so fascinating as finding all of the little variations that the human body can possess, and having to work around all of those variations to put it back together when it's broken. No two femurs are exactly alike; there's always something unique about each and every single one that I put back together." 

"Uplifting," Jon snorted. 

"It should be!" Ramsay insisted, slapping him on the back. His hand lingered, then dropped. "My passion is healing, Detective Inspector. I'm not different from you—I'm not afraid to look right into the mouth of the beast of humanity and reach my hands between its dripping jaws."

They paused at the exit, and turned to face each other. Ramsay looked directly into Jon's eyes. "There are two kinds of surgeons, Detective: the kind that want to heal, and the kind that want to own. Tywin Lannister is driven by power. I trained under him, I watched him for years. He's not fascinated by the human body, the way that I and so many of my colleagues are; he feels no passion for the art of it. But he commands the operating theatre, and when he's holding the scalpel, no one speaks. I used to think it was just his style, his wealth radiating from him, but then I saw him in the wild. I went to a benefit, recently—"

"—I know, he said you tried to suck up to him," Jon interrupted, but to Ramsay's credit, he only laughed and shook his head. 

"You've nailed me," he said, holding up his hands, and Jon wondered if he had meant to imply what he had. "I did try—and failed, spectacularly, and insulted him along the way. But I also learned something about him that night, something I won't soon forget. He's not so cool-headed around the young women—the really young ones, I mean." 

"How young?" 

Ramsay's lips curved. 

"Young like the nineteen year old girl you brought with you yesterday," he said slyly. "You and Lannister can bond over that. All that repression and order must have fucked with his head; at any rate, he set that terrible golden gaze on the youngest of the girls at the benefit—it was enough to make the girl cry—but then I saw her climbing into his car at the end of the night. The poor thing was shaking. She didn't want to get in that car, but who says no to Tywin Lannister? It's none of my business, of course, but it makes one wonder. How good can a man be if he's happy to make a girl cry as she climbs into his lap? Most surgeons are indifferent to the power they wield, Detective, but a rare few get high on it." 

"You haven't given me very much," Jon said, as they started walking again. 

"You wined and dined me and got nothing more than a peck on the cheek," Ramsay mused. "But I assure you I'm the only man brave enough to speak a word against Tywin Lannister." 

**Sansa **

The bar at Claridge's was packed with men in careless tuxedos and glittering women who smelled like amber and black violet. There had just been a party, apparently, or there was about to be one. Sansa pushed through the low-ceilinged bar, past red leather stools and low tables, to the hearth at the very back. Men lounged there with almost roguish self-awareness of how proletarian their pints were against their tuxedos, but one man was sitting alone, drinking nothing, attracting hushed looks from nearly everyone at the bar. _Could it really be him?_ they all wondered amongst themselves. 

Jaime Lannister's magnificent golden hair gleamed even in the dim light of the bar. The way he looked in his tuxedo, the way he was draped on the velvet chair, the room seemed to have been arranged around him; everything else was just decoration, just props, on his stage. When Sansa reached him, he lifted his chin, and a server hastened to them. 

"What'll you have, Miss Stone?" Jaime asked, as Sansa shed her coat. Sansa smiled at the server. She still had a headache from her two shots of whiskey this afternoon, but she wasn't sure she could get away with taking up a seat without buying anything like Jaime could. 

"Surprise me with something interesting, thank you," she said, and dropped into the velvet chair beside Jaime as the server scuttled off. 

"Thank god you're here. These people won't stop looking at me," he said through his teeth. He stretched with catlike grace and draped an arm across the back of her chair, and looked at her out the corner of his eye. He flashed her a grin, all pointed white canines and thin handsome lips. "You look well, though I maintain the black doesn't suit you." 

"I'm wearing Victoria Beckham for you, Jaime. The least you could do is say I look pretty," she dismissed, and he laughed, shaking his head. 

"I have both her number and her husband's in my mobile, but for different reasons, so I can't say I'm impressed. It's terribly avant-garde," he said, glancing down at the black dress and black boots. "My father will prefer to see some skin, you know. None of this maudlin, art-gallery-chic thing for him." 

"About that—" she began, but the server had returned with a metal cup, a pinecone, and a brass-handled lighter. 

"This ought to be good," Jaime said with relish, leaning forward. "Alright, let's see it—" he squinted at the server's name tag, "—Noah. God. He must be Gen Z. Such a funny coincidence; I happen to use pinecones and lighters in be—"

"—Thank you! Noah," she said loudly, as the server fumbled with the pinecone and the lighter. He set the pinecone on fire with a forced flourish, and let it burn over the cup. 

"Is this some sort of ritualistic sacrifice?" Jaime wondered. Noah hastily put out the pinecone. 

"S-sorry, I think I did that wrong," he mumbled, flushed in the face. 

"Yes, that didn't seem quite how it was supposed to go," Jaime snarked. After a quick and idiosyncratic bow, Noah beetled off in humiliation. Sansa picked up the metal cup. 

"Are you happy now?" She took a sip, and Jaime shrugged. 

"Not particularly," he admitted. "Though I have been amusing myself imagining you on a date with my father. I can only guess this came about thanks to my brother's little quest?" 

Someone was trying to sneak a picture of Jaime with their mobile. Jaime smiled at them and then ignored it. He had lived much of his adult life in the public eye, between being a Lannister and having been one of the star players for Manchester United. These days, his existence mainly consisted of endorsements and charities, at the behest of his father who insisted he 'do something' with his life. Brienne saw him weekly, but Sansa seldom saw him, mainly for her own safety. She self-consciously flattened her bangs, and Jaime's leonine eyes tracked the movement. 

"I went to interview him... And ran into Jon Snow," she confessed grimly. Jaime nodded slowly. "And your father somehow found my home address, which must mean he's had someone tail me." 

"That is more or less a disaster," he said after a moment. Sansa bit her lip, then took the plunge. 

"And then I met up with Jon Snow for a drink; he told me he had had a photographer follow me; then I followed Jon Snow and saw Ramsay Bolton." Her hand trembled on the metal cup and she gripped it tightly. 

"A _total_ disaster, then," Jaime confirmed, staring at her. "Of your own making. I would admire it, if I didn't know what your safety had cost, and of so many people, too."

There it was. Sansa felt a lump forming in her throat. 

"I know," she said. "Believe me, I know." 

"Far be it from me to judge you," Jaime said now, leaning forward. "But—and this is peculiar—I do feel responsible for you, rather like an older brother." 

Sansa took a long drink, then looked at Jaime. His elbows were on his knees; even in his polished tux it was clear he was an athlete. She set the cup down. 

"How many women do you think Ramsay Bolton has harmed?" 

Jaime looked away in thought. 

"I don't know. Many, probably." He tapped his lip, and they each stared out at the rest of the bar in contemplative silence. "So you're going to do it?" 

"I have to." 

"Brienne will have a fit. She'll give birth to a litter of kittens and will never stop screaming," Jaime mused. "She had good practice, too, when I took up with Cersei again. I broke her in for you, so, you're welcome. At least she's now had some practice at having her faith and belief in someone she cares for utterly destroyed." 

"Ugh." Sansa sent Jaime an incredulous smile. "I still can't believe you did go back to her. After everything."

"I can hardly believe you willingly took on my brother's case, voluntarily met with Jon Snow, and are now accepting a date with my father. After everything," he shot back pointedly. "You'll want to be careful around Snow, too. If I remember correctly, he was nobody's fool, and a wig and contacts only go so far, _Alayne_. And he's tailing you, too, so he's bound to catch you on your sad little tours of your siblings' lives." 

"He's got a photographer," Sansa admitted dismally. "He even told me he could tell it was a wig." Jaime made a show of cringing. "And I'm going to see him again," she admitted, watching a couple flirt before the bar. "I have to. You'll enjoy this: Stannis Baratheon's daughter is in love with him." 

"Stannis has a daughter?" Jaime was baffled. "I didn't know he could—well, you know. I assumed it was just smooth down there. Like a doll."

"Ha ha." Sansa rolled her eyes. "She's nineteen and follows him around like a puppy. She's caught Ramsay's eye." 

Jaime's face changed. It was as though the sun had been put out, for one brief and cold moment, until he regained himself. 

"Alayne," he said frankly, "what have you got yourself into?" He raked a strong hand through his thick hair. "Though I do enjoy imagining what Stannis Baratheon's face might look like if he knew his daughter was in love with Jon Snow." 

And then he looked at her again, eyes narrowing into knowing crescents. "Are _you_ in love with Jon Snow?" 

It was no use to say he was her cousin; Jaime's lifelong affair with his own twin sister rendered that point moot. It was also no use to point out that she had not seen him in so many years, because Jaime had been part of her old life and had been one of the few parts of her new life. 

"No," she said after a moment, toying with her metal cup. "But he is...compelling. If I were a nineteen year old girl—"

"—You were a nineteen year old girl, once upon a time," Jaime cut in swiftly. "A nineteen year old girl who knew Jon Snow, who was known for liking everyone but never seemed to like Jon Snow very much. And Snow was pathologically patient and gentle with your brothers and sister, but barely spoke to you. It all makes a man wonder, now, why you agreed to have that drink with him, why you're so moved by a young girl's crush on him that you feel the need to toss aside your own safety and wellbeing." 

"—If I were a nineteen year old girl and knew him now," she corrected, "I would be in love with him, too, and wouldn't understand why it couldn't happen." 

"Perhaps you ought to give dating a try," Jaime said. He was rising from his chair now, adjusting his tuxedo with short, frank movements. "This all seems to revolve a little too much around Jon Snow." 

Sansa stood as well. Jaime picked up her metal cup and tossed back the rest of her drink, and pulled a face as he set the cup down hard. He waved poor Noah back with a flash of his black card. "God, that's horrid," he said loudly as Noah reached them, face flushed. 

"It was delicious," she insisted. "Have you got a party to go to?"

"Yes, some fashion thing. Whoever it was made my tux," he dismissed. "I probably ought to know his name." 

"Probably," she teased. "So do you have any advice for me?" 

"Barring "don't do it"? No. Wear a slutty dress and act like you're nineteen. That ought to do it for my father," Jaime said disgustedly. "Oh, and if you truly are going down this idiotic path, I have two pieces of advice for you. First: don't tell Brienne, please. It will break her. And the second one: watch out for Jon Snow." 

"Why?" 

Jaime turned to her, and set a hand on her shoulder. A shot of it would undoubtedly be found on gossip sites and Twitter within ten minutes; Sansa tried to angle her face closer to Jaime and out of view. 

"He spent a lot of time looking at Sansa Stark, if I recall correctly. Oh, and he's an excellent shot; the best I've ever seen. I wouldn't want to be in the line of fire...and you happen to be surrounded by suspects on all sides." 

After they had parted ways, Sansa went into the powder room in the hotel. Among the wood paneling and wildly elegant wall murals, she took out her mobile. 

She first responded to Tywin's email, accepting his dinner invitation, and then started a new email. 

_ **Dear Detective Inspector Snow, ** _

_ **I'd like to meet tomorrow. Happy to come to you. ** _

_ **\- Alayne ** _

A group of women bustled in, brocade cocktail dresses rustling, tubes of lipstick clicking, and Sansa leaned against the wall. In the mirror, the inherent _wrong_ness of her black wig was more evident than ever, here among this golden light and warmth. It was like the ghost of her real hair was always visible, trailing behind her like a fragrant memory. It was like she wanted someone to see it. She flattened the bangs. No, that wasn't what she wanted. That was absurd. 

She hit send, then put her mobile away and left Claridges. 

**Jon**

He was watching the little pills circle the drain when he heard his mobile vibrate. A new email. 

Jon felt better than he had in recent memory. He felt _alive, _he felt on fire. He felt like he was his old self again, and watching the pills that had shackled him disappear was like shedding an uncomfortably damp coat. He could breathe, he could move, for the first time in months. Exhilarated and free, he went to his mobile. 

In the pallid light of his bathroom, his mobile sat on the edge of his sink. It was a new email from Alayne Stone, and his fingers were still numb with relief as he unlocked his mobile. 

She wanted to meet tomorrow? Was she back on the case? That had to be it. But what had put her back on the case? He had learned that Tyrion Lannister's cheque to her had bounced, and even if Lannister had somehow acquired the funds to pay her, it was unlikely that the famed Lannister pride would allow him to slink back to her and try again. So what had done it? 

He almost dropped his mobile at the sudden pounding on the flimsy door of his flat. 

"Jon. Open up." 

A woman's voice. Meera Reed's voice. 

Jon set his mobile facedown, and left the yellow light of the bathroom. The rest of his flat was dark, and he flicked on the light switch before undoing the chain and lock on the front door. 

And there was Meera, standing on the front step, hunched over in the cold, and she froze when he opened the door. She was wearing lipstick and looked like she had been crying, and her dark eyes traced over him. 

"Meera," he greeted flatly. That feeling of too much French food, the rain and mist, and wanting to kill her came back in a queasy rush.

"Your tee shirt has a hole in it. Can I come in?" She made to push her way inside, but Jon blocked her. 

"What do you want?" 

An ambulance roared by; he was near Lewisham Hospital and heard sirens at all hours of the night. Brakelights blurred in the mist behind Meera. She was biting her lip as she stared at him. 

"I have more proof," she forced out. "I know she's Sansa Stark. Sansa Stark is _alive._" 

They stared at each other. The kind thing would have been to let her in, to give her a glass of wine and help her dry her tears, but Jon sensed that he was about to step off firm ground and into a bog designed for his own doom here. Letting in his disabled cousin's unstable girlfriend, her face wet with tears, seemed a clear fool's errand, and he loved Bran too much. 

"Arya told you to fuck off with this. I told you to fuck off with this," he began calmly. Meera's jaw trembled. "And you _know_ this has to hurt Bran. It all makes me wonder what you're up to, and why you would do this to him." 

She swallowed, her dark eyes growing wet again. 

"What I'm _up to_?" Her voice was low, shaking. "What I'm _up to?_" 

She stepped up to the top step, so that she was closer to him. She was uncomfortably close, now, but to move away would be to allow her the space to force her way into his flat. "How _dare _you," she breathed. 

"No, how dare _you,_" he countered, though he still was strangely calm and collected. He felt in control; he felt electric. "Bran has been disabled for all of his adult life. He'll never be able to have sex, have kids, have a normal life. And you've been with him through all of that, with never any sign of leaving. It seemed so honorable—but then you do things like this. And I wonder what the hell your problem is." He drew in a breath. "You keep saying I've got...issues...and that's fine. I probably do. But that has nothing to do with how you're treating Bran. It's unacceptable. And if you think Arya will let this go on any longer—"

"—You haven't _been there!" _

It was sudden. Her fists were shaking, tears were glistening on her cheeks. "I've been there, for every nightmare, for every flashback, for every time he's pissed himself. I've _been there. _I've listened to him _thousands _of times as he's recounted that night, drawing up maps and timetables and—and—and all sorts of _bullshit." _She wiped at her eyes with the heel of her hand and choked out a sob. "I thought it was just his way of dealing with the trauma, at first. I ignored it. But the more I listened, the more I saw how none of it added up. And then I started looking into it, actually looking into it—"

"—Meera." She was shaking, so he gripped her shoulder. His heart was twisting, aching, painfully. He did not want to feel sorry for her, but he did, anyway. She began to shake uncontrollably. _Fucking hell. _She was hyperventilating, sobbing wildly. The girl he had been introduced to as Bran's girlfriend all those years ago, sporty and quiet and pragmatic, would never have been found like this, sobbing on the front step of a man she hardly knew. The accident had fucked with all of them, and it was unkind of him to ignore what it had done to Meera. "Look, you can come in. I'm sorry," he sighed, stepping out of the way and ushering her into his flat. 

He was ashamed of his flat. Most of the time he didn't even think of it, but as Meera looked around the one-room flat, with its ugly wall-to-wall carpeting and bare walls and naked lightbulbs, Jon felt the shame acutely, and for a moment he almost regretted flushing away the tranquilizers that Dr. R'Hllor had prescribed. 

She dropped down on his sofa (secondhand, from Sam and Gilly, who had got it secondhand from someone else) and discreetly wiped her eyes and nose with her sleeve as he went to fetch her a glass of water. He didn't have tissues, so he handed her a wad of paper towels, not looking at her for embarrassment, and perched on the secondhand coffee table. It felt intrusive to sit beside her, but he had no other seating in his living area. 

"I'm sorry too," she said thickly, not looking at him and clearing her throat. "Look, will you just look at the picture I got?" 

"Sure," he said quietly, taking her mobile from her, their hands brushing. 

"I got it on Twitter. I wasn't even looking for her. But someone tweeted a picture of Jaime Lannister tonight, before a party for Eskandar. It's from a fashion account I follow. Anyway, he was spotted at Claridge's Fumoir before the party with a woman." 

Jon studied the grainy, dark picture. It could have been anyone. A long-legged woman in a dramatic black dress, with chin-length black hair, was leaning toward Jaime Lannister. In another, his arm was practically around her shoulders. 

When Jon looked back at Meera, she was gazing at him hungrily. "Jaime Lannister _was there_ the night of the accident, the night Sansa Stark disappeared; Bran _knows_ he was. He remembers him." She was sitting on the edge of the sofa now, and her knees brushed his. Jon edged back, the coffee table creaking. 

He still knew the reports by heart; of course one of the first things he had done with his new access as a Detective for the Met was to look, in finer detail, at the event that had so dramatically altered the lives of everyone he had loved. Jaime Lannister had been investigated, per Bran's 'uncovered' memory, but had had an awkward alibi that had been backed up: he had been _with_ his twin sister, the most salacious alibi that Jon had seen yet. He had always been in awe of Jaime Lannister, and had not yet forgotten how Jaime had so defiantly praised his hunting skills when Jon had felt so lowly beside the Stark wealth. Now that he was older, he knew it had been an act of kindness, an act of generosity. He would keep Lannister's secret. 

"Jaime Lannister had an ironclad alibi, Meera," Jon said at last. "Believe me, I looked into it." 

"Y-you did?" Her gaze was so hopeful that it pained him. 

"Of course I did," he scoffed. "I wanted to believe Bran, I wanted it so badly." He handed her back the mobile. 

"You wanted to believe Sansa was still alive," she said in a low voice, looking at him. But the heat of anger was gone; she only seemed broken. Jon ignored his own burst of anger, and stared at her, willing himself to be calm. "I saw how you l-looked at her," she shuddered. "Like she was made of light. Like she was painfully beautiful." Her lips twitched. "Bran's never looked at me like that. No one's ever looked at me like that. So I noticed it." 

She was crying again, in earnest, now, tiny barely-stifled sobs. "H-he's never going to look at me like that. He's gone. H-he's just a shell now." 

"Meera—"

—It happened too fast. She reached for him and gripped his jaw and kissed him, her lips salty and her touch desperate. Flesh, flesh, flesh—he saw Ygritte, saw her freckled skin in the morning light, then saw her unseeing eyes and her blood pooling on the ground beneath her; felt her fingers in his hair, heard her call him _lover boy _again, the way she had before—

"—Stop—" he choked, ripping himself from her. His heart was pounding and she was stunned as he stumbled away from the coffee table, reeling, the room spinning. 

For a lurching breathless moment they stared each other down. Meera's face flushed. Jon realized his hands were shaking. 

"God. I'm so sorry," she said in horror. "I just—I've always thought you were so—" She clapped a hand over her mouth. "I don't know who I am," she blurted, then stumbled out of his flat, slamming the door behind her. 


End file.
